I Have Gone Out
by Nyah
Summary: Would you rather eat from the tree of knowledge or remain a child in the garden forever? Eric/Sookie. End, part the first.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** All recognizable nouns (that goes for persons, places, and things) belong to Charlaine Harris, her publishers etc. I am borrowing for entertainment purposes only. Anyone you don't recognize is mine. Or, I suppose unrecognizable characters might be Mrs. Harris's as well and I've just written them poorly. That's for you to decide.

**Summary: **A story that began as an attempt to solve the puzzle of why Eric didn't come to the rescue in Dead and Gone. Here you'll find some action and adventure, a bit of romance, a whole slew of intrigues, and maybe a smattering of humor. From the audience, this story asks for rapt attention, from the characters this story asks, "Would you rather eat from the tree of knowledge or remain a child in the garden forever?"

**Characters: **Ensemble

**Pairing: **Eric/Sookie

**Rating:** Varies, PG-13-M

**Spoliers: **Books 1-9

**Note: **Many betas have made spectacular cameo performances throughout this story. Thanks to everyone who has played sounding board, cheerleader, and reader throughout. Special thanks, in that arena to Meads, may tireless cheerleader and promoter. Immense gratitude goes to nycsnowbird who took it upon herself to edit the entirety of this monster post-mortem. Any mistakes in content you find are still mine, any mistakes in grammar probably indicate a chapter I haven't gotten around to replacing yet. Thanks for stopping by, enjoy the read.

**I Have Gone Out**

**Chapter 1**

Eric and Pam were seated in a booth at Merlotte's. That, right there, was enough to make it an interesting night. I couldn't think of a single thing that might have brought the Shreveport vampires to my little corner of Bon Temps, at least not when they'd failed to approach me with some clandestine enterprise. But at the moment, I was far more worried about the fact that we had a packed house and my two pale patrons were taking up a four-top.

"Sookie, you got any openings over there?" Emma Asli called. She could see very well that my tables were all accounted for but I couldn't be too upset. Emma had worked few enough shifts that she was still thoroughly "the new girl" and tonight was as busy as I'd ever seen it. I wouldn't be too surprised if the people waiting were giving her grief too since they knew she was green and, on the whole, thoroughly less creepy than I.

Still, I didn't bother shaking my head and Emma didn't ask again.

Sam, my boss, was behind the bar mixing drinks as coolly as if he were right in the middle of the two o'clock slump instead of a sizable portion of the town's population that seemed to have developed a powerful thirst all at once. He had called Terry Bellefleur in to help though and I could count on one hand the number of times Merlotte's had sported two bartenders at once.

Besides Emma, Jillian Boucher, newly a mother and newly a high school drop-out, was working the late shift and Holly had come back in for a double to help out. The extra waitress on the floor was two parts miracle but one part mayhem. We'd double filled orders more than once, with the sections being hastily rearranged to accommodate a fourth pair of hands.

The press of so many thoughts on my mental shields was like flood waters swirling outside an earthen levy. But, thankfully, my own personal levy had grown stronger over the past few years thanks to a little practice and a few (metaphorical) sandbags of vampire blood. The sort of collective buzz of "wow, busy night" only served to propel me around the dining room and distract me enough to keep most of the nastier thoughts to a minimum.

I'd just successfully delivered a tray of a round dozen mugs of draft (thanks again to the vampire blood for that piece of strength and balance) when a surge of amused annoyance overtook me. I was confused for a moment, wondering if the bustle of the evening snuck up on me or if it was already that time of the month again. But then, understanding, my head snapped around to take in the big, blonde source of my sudden PMS.

It seemed Emma Asli had figured out that the patrons of Merlotte's, mostly friends, family, and co-workers, who weren't used to waiting for a seat, wouldn't object too strongly to being seated together if it meant they'd get served. She'd finagled the greater part of the loitering customers in her section into already occupied booths or tacked them on to corners of tables. So it was due to this rather singular circumstance that my brother, Jason, and his buddy, Hoyt, had been packed into a booth with Eric and Pam.

I could feel Eric's mood shift in the direction of amusement. This was not necessarily a good thing.

The timer on the microwave dinged as I was filling two mugs with the summer draft. Emma quickly removed the caps from the two bottles of TrueBlood. "I can get those," I said, having already planned to run interference of the possibly volatile situation that was my brother and my … whatever Eric was, sharing breathing space. The danger was not at all diffused by the fact that Eric didn't breathe.

Emma passed me the bottles by the necks and said, "Corner booth," as if I had several vamp tables to choose from, before rushing off at Antoine's call of "order up." I trayed the bottled blood and the beers and headed grimly for the booth. In the few steps from the bar, some of Eric's joie de vivre had dropped right into my belly through the strange bond we shared. When I met the motley foursome, my stock smile was almost genuine. "Summer ale," I said, sliding the mugs to Jason and Hoyt. Jason broke his glare at the vampires just long enough to turn it on me.

I forged ahead, having learned long ago to ignore my brother, thoughts and significant looks included. "O positive," I announced, distributing the blood to Pam and Eric, both of whom looked a tad drawn. "I think we've got one AB neg left if that's more to your liking."

Pam's face remained indifferent. Eric's gaze slid over me, declaring very clearly which flavor he'd prefer. I hadn't quite finished chiding myself for the heat that dropped distinctly below my belly when my subconscious decided to offer its help (though, who it was helping was unclear, it certainly wasn't me). In my mind's eye, Eric stood on an open plain, a gleaming silver axe-head buried in his collar-bone.

"Please tell the dark one that this arrangement is less than satisfactory," Pam said, her dry voice cutting through the remembered nightmare. The dark one. That would be Emma who was not exactly Merlotte's first black waitress but only because she was not exactly black.

Pam's eyes were fixed on Jason who had begun to growl in his head as well as his chest. Once she'd found my beautiful brother … intriguing, but now, it seemed, his status as a Were had turned her opinion. She said, "We would have preferred a window seat."

Hoyt laughed nervously, proof that he was smarter than I gave him credit for. Pam was sniffing the open bottle of blood, her expression nothing short of voracious. "So what brings you all to Bon Temps?" If nothing else, Hoyt had been raised with proper manners.

Which could be said for Jason as well, though they didn't seem to have stuck. "Probably looking to pull my sister into one mess or another," Jason said, answering for the vampires who probably wouldn't have answered anyway. My brother, often the object of misplaced blame, had no problem laying it thick on others. Though I'd explained as much as I could about the events of the fairy war a few months back, Jason, it seemed still blamed the vamps in my life for my sorry state following it.

I turned from the table, sending up an honest-to-goodness prayer that everyone would keep his fangs or claws to himself tonight.

I was delivering fish platters (which would soon get very popular among the Catholics on account of Lent) to a women's quilting circle from the local Baptist church when Hoyt Fortenberry called my name. Hoyt was a big guy, he'd played football with Jason in high school and might have gone on to play in college if only he'd managed to pull off the minimum SAT scores to fulfill an athletic scholarship. Hoyt's football career might have ended over ten years ago but it was his Friday night game voice that he called my name with now.

I spun on my heels to face the corner booth. Hoyt was standing, or trying to anyway, trapped as he was between the wall and Jason. I couldn't see the vampires from my vantage point. I set the platters down (haphazardly, I must admit) in front of the ladies. One of them remarked about the absence of condiments. Whether the complaint had been made aloud or not I couldn't be sure since I was moving at full force to that corner booth, ready to take a wooden spoon to the lot of them just as Gran would have done.

Jason's face, as it often was, was blank. But there was a firm set to his features and I could hear his snarled thoughts sort of willing indifference.

Eric was utterly fascinated.

If I'd had a moment to think, it might have troubled me that I noticed this a split second before I noticed Pam. Pam was covered in blood.

Even as I slid to a stop on the less than clean floor, Pam wretched, bringing up what had to be her second or third gush of blood. The vampire coughed and gagged. Dead she might be, but in that moment Pam, with bubbles of red bursting between her teeth, looked for all the world like a woman hemorrhaging.

Pam breathed through the end of her heave, blowing out a final spray of blood and spittle. She'd remained sitting straight through the ordeal, as if she had been too stunned to lean over and vomit properly.

I watched the synthetic blood that had been Pam's meal seep into her yellow sweater and wondered if it had gone bad. But there was something wrong, far more wrong than a blood-covered vampire occupying one of my tables. Pam had gagged on the blood.

I stared in revulsion.

Eric stared in fascination.

Pam was breathing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**Chapter 2**

Pam's eyes were round as saucers. The blood that coated her chin, neck and chest was ominously dark in the low light of the bar. It shined wetly, dripping in thick, inky drops from the underside of her chin. It was TrueBlood (which lacked clotting factors) and not Hoyt's or Jason's.

"Lady, are you OK?" Hoyt asked now that Pam's spectacular digestive display seemed to be over.

Pam didn't answer. She was paling under the blood. With half the people in the crowded bar staring at her, Pam remained almost motionless. It was with that same sense of wrong that accompanied her choking that I noticed that Pam wasn't perfectly still. Her nose wrinkled and relaxed, her lips pressed tighter together.

When Pam's skin took on a faint blue tinge, Eric touched her shoulder gently. It was a gesture I had never seen pass between the two. "Pam, you must breathe," he said.

After a moment, Pam turned toward her maker with her whole body as if turning her neck were too delicate a motion to handle. Long seconds passed. Then Pam blew out a shuddering breath, blowing out more thick gobs of blood like a child in hysterics blows out snot. Immediately she breathed in again, drawing fresh air into lungs that hadn't needed it in centuries.

"I am alive," she said. I'd never thought I'd see Pam look so lost. She breathed in and out mechanically the way a person does when she thinks too hard about breathing instead of just letting it happen naturally. "Why?"

The question might have been rhetorical or it might have been addressed to Eric; either way, no one answered.

A blush, an honest to goodness blush, was creeping across Pam's features, which were already pinker than they ever were—even after a good meal. "Turn me," she said so quietly that probably only Eric could hear her. In my head the request was almost a scream. Pam closed her eyes for an instant, a gesture I recognized as an all too human moment of steeling oneself and swallowing one's pride. "Please Eric." Her voice was a hair closer to its usual coolness.

Jason snarled. I was relieved to see that Hoyt and all the other patrons watching seemed too focused on the bloody vampire (former vampire?) to notice my brother's lapse into feline behavior.

Ignoring Jason, Eric leaned toward Pam. Because he had his back to me, I couldn't see his face but it seemed he was hovering scant inches from her neck. I remembered that hundreds of years ago, Eric had chosen Pam to be his companion out of all the women he'd met over the centuries. He had drained her to the point of death. He had given her his blood, something he hadn't done before or since for any human. Until me. At least, the giving part anyway.

I thought of Pam telling me the story of her birth as a vampire, how she'd seemed chillingly unconcerned over her own murder. She hadn't seemed to regret her death in the least. But still ….

"Northman," Sam said warningly before I could. He'd come to stand just inches behind me. In his hands he gripped a pool cue, a not very subtle threat since, with a little pressure from his knee, the stick would become a crude, but effective, vampire-killing instrument. "Not in my bar."

I was a little affronted at the 'not in my bar' part. Sam, with his Shifter's nose and his knowledge of the supernatural world had to realize that Pam was human and yet he was implying that it would be alright for Eric to kill her so long as he first vacated the premises.

"We must go," Eric said without looking at Sam. He stood up from the booth and offered Pam his hand. Pam recoiled an inch. Perhaps some long-buried instinct had kicked in. "Stand," Eric said. "Walk." I wished I could see his face.

They left quickly. I had seen vampires exit a place almost too quickly for the human eye to follow. They can really move if they've got somewhere to be or if they cause someone enough grief that she rescinds their invitation to be in her home. Pam and Eric's exit wasn't so blindingly fast as that since Pam was no longer capable of such motion but my brain had slowed down enough from shock and awe that it pretty much amounted to the same thing.

When the door closed behind them, Merlotte's erupted with sound. My head felt ready to explode with combined surge of mental and verbal exclamations.

"How did that happen?"

"Think she's really alive?"

_All that blood. I think I'm going to be sick._

"That'll show them."

_I wonder if they're out in the parking lot. Maybe he's biting her right now._

"Alive?"

"The Lord had to show His hand eventually."

"Is that even possible?"

"Think she'll, like, get old really fast?"

_How is that possible?_

"Sookie, you OK?" Hoyt asked. I realized I was clutching my head and probably looking about ready to collapse. Poor Hoyt, so well trained to look after the women around him and, tonight at least, so unable to do anything to help them.

I straightened up with effort, pushing the voices out of my head like I was blowing a big soap bubble around myself. If I didn't manage to calm myself down, the mental barrier I'd thrown up would burst just like a bubble too. I drew a few breaths. With only the clangor of real voices surrounding me, I did begin to feel a little calmer. "I'm OK, Hoyt," I said. "Thanks."

"That was pretty freaky, huh?" said my brother's good-natured friend.

I nodded my agreement. "I'll get a rag," I said. What else do you do when your vampire friend starts up-chucking O positive?

Sam walked out of the men's restroom as I was approaching the ladies'. He'd already drawn a bucket of water. "I can take care of it," he said.

"It's my section." This was strictly true. It had been my section until Holly had come in, now it was Emma's.

"Sookie," he said in that unique Sam way that manages to be concerned without being patronizing.

"It's just blood, Sam." And Lord knew I'd gotten somewhat immune to gore over the past few years.

He let me take the bucket from him but I paused where I stood. "Did you know that could happen?" Oftentimes, Sam knew both more and less about the supernatural world than I expected. It seemed he'd spent most of his life separate from other supes and yet, I had the distinct impression that he had quite a lot of knowledge I didn't in that swirling Shifter's brain of his.

Sam shook his head. "I've never seen it," he said. "You probably know more about the vampires than I do by this point." I didn't miss the resentment in his voice or the fact that he hadn't truly answered my question. I was immediately annoyed with him for both of these things and then immediately forgave him because we'd all just had a shock and because Sam's my boss and also one of the best people I know, supe or otherwise.

When I returned to the dining room, bucket of surface cleanser in hand, I saw that Emma had reshuffled Hoyt and Jason. Two pairs of men's work boots remained at the table to mark the former occupants. "There's blood on the boots," she explained. "I didn't want them to track it around." She was mopping at the … spill with a rag from the bar that was already sodden with alcohol and blood. I didn't protest when she dunked it in the bucket of solution and proceeded to help me take care of the mess. Soon people would get over the excitement of the scene and settle down to the serious business of drinking again. In all likelihood, an even larger crowd would gather since quite a few of the patrons were already on theirs cells calling all their friends about the spectacle of the vomiting vampire.

As I scrubbed at the fake wood of the tabletop, and the rinse bucket got progressively darker, I tried to block out memories of other, similar, messes. The memories jockeyed for place, each trying to assert its own horror. "Hey," Emma said quietly, delicately, especially for a woman who I'd never thought of as delicate. "I can get this if you want. It's my section and I used to be an orderly in a hospital; I can do blood, no problem."

I realized then that I had paused mid-scrub. I shook myself. "I'm fine." I forced my lips into a familiar smile. "Not even real blood." Emma didn't look convinced. "I know a lot of vampires. I'm kind of used to it."

"Oh," Emma said, her dark brows inching up. "You're that Sookie? Cr- "

Emma looked down, almost managing a blush on her dusky skin.

"Crazy Sookie?" I finished, smiling to show I wasn't offended. Incidentally, it was the same smile I wore in Merlotte's every night.

She nodded once. "Yeah, I heard it … I didn't mean …."

"There's not a lot of 'Sookie's' around here to choose from."

"Right."

We both paused to survey our work. I was reasonably confident that the darkness of the tabletop was just dampness and not a lasting stain.

"I don't know why people do that," Emma said, shaking her head.

"What?"

"You know, drink that synthetic blood. It almost always makes them puke. We had people throwing up buckets of the stuff at the hospital. Especially on Halloween …."

She trailed off, probably noticing that I was staring at her like she'd sprouted extra limbs. "They're vampires," I said. "Pam is—was—a vampire. They have to drink it."

"Oh, I didn't …." Emma's eyes opened wide. Out of sheer disbelief I reached through my shield to touch her mind. _Idiot. Just because you've seen a bunch of fangbangers downing TrueBloods doesn't mean you can just assume nobody's actually a vampire. Things like this, this is how you're going to get yourself killed. They can be right out in the open these days. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot._

The mental scolding was still going on when I tuned out. Emma's thoughts were remarkably clear for someone who I had noticed as a loud broadcaster. "It's OK," I said, though I have to admit I mostly agreed with her self-diagnosis. "Yeah, those two are both vampires. They come here from time to time. And there's Bill Compton as well." I thought of the few appearances Bill had put in at Merlotte's after the silver poisoning. He face was grayer than ever these days. "We have quite a few Shifters as well."

She nodded and thought, Mr. Compton's a vampire? Well fuck me, I've gotta pay better attention to what people are drinking. "I haven't seen many … um, supernatural people."

I nodded. "Welcome to Bon Temps." Maybe it wasn't the kindest thing to say. Maybe I was making fun a little. It had been a long night. Sue me.

###

I left Merlotte's that night with promises from Terry that he'd be back in the morning to give the floor an especially thorough scrubbing. After the vampires departed, the evening had moved quickly, what with a good amount of time spent taking care of the mess and then the after-effects of adrenaline in my system to hurry the minutes along.

In the parking lot I retrieved my cell phone from my purse. I wanted to check on Pam and I didn't trust myself driving at night and talking on the phone at the same time. I found Eric's name on my contact list. I'd been in this exact position before, cursor highlighting Eric's number while I stood in the parking lot after work, and not made the call.

Of course, on those occasions I'd been exhausted from a bad day and hearing Eric's voice seemed like a frighteningly delightful prospect. When I say 'frighteningly delightful' I mean so tempting that it scared the bejesus out of me and made me resentful enough of Eric and our blood bond that I closed my phone in a huff and drove home angry. In fact, I often drove home angry about being angry too. Blood bonds. Sheesh.

This time I had ample reason for making the call. Eric answered on the first ring. "Hello, my lover," he said instead of his usual way of answering which was a terse, "Eric."

"Hi Eric," I replied but apparently he'd already passed the phone because his greeting was followed shortly by Pam's, "Hello, my friend." It was hard to tell with her but I thought the variation on the theme was intentional on Pam's part.

"Pam!" I don't know why I was surprised to be speaking to her. I suppose she'd fallen under "sick human" status in my head and been relegated to bed rest and chicken soup. Pam eating chicken soup, now there was an image for a rainy day. "How are you … feeling."

"I am dead," she said happily.

"Oh." What did a girl say to a newly re-deceased friend? Congratulations? I hope this after life is as good as the last?

"Eric is not responsible," Pam said and I had to wonder if the vamp in question was standing across from her and gesticulating wildly. Or, more likely, staring her down until she relented and told me this.

"So, what happened?"

Pam paused and I had the familiar feeling that this would end up being one of those things you don't tell the human. "I was ill," she said. "Now I'm not."

"What, like a 24-_minute_ stomach bug?" I said, dripping so much sarcasm that I thought it might leak right onto my phone.

"Yes," Pam said. No sarcasm apparent. "Like that." Well at least she was feeling like herself again. "We will return tomorrow night."

Pam didn't sound thrilled about this. Even over the phone. Even Pam.

"Great," I said, thinking exactly the opposite.

"Yes," she agreed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: See part 1**

**CHAPTER 3**

I've been a big reader as long as I can remember. When I was a little kid, I'd beg my father to take me to the library and leave with as many books as they'd let me take, just pleased as punch. Maybe it was the disability—gift—of telepathy that made the escape books offered irresistible. Maybe it was that the lives of the people in stories were so much more interesting than mine. Maybe I just liked to read.

In any case, the opinions of the adventurers I visited so often in the world of print and imagination seemed to fall into two camps when it came to the subject of adventuring. The larger camp was made up of heroes and heroines that found the tedium of day-to-day activities became terribly dull after one had gone adventuring.

OK, so characters in books didn't often express this opinion outright. But I noticed that one didn't often read about Nancy Drew or Jason Bourne going to the grocery store or using the toilet. And even the relatively sedate Elizabeth Bennets of literature only got the stories of the scandalous events and momentous occasions of life put into print.

The smaller camp found the down time between peril to be truly welcome and refreshing. I couldn't quite think of any examples but there had to be a few. Right?

Whatever. I thought of myself as thoroughly entrenched between the two camps. I figured that's allowed because refusing all claim to the title of heroine would be falsely modest at this point since I'd saved a few lives and all but I didn't consider myself a real heroine. Gifted I may be but I would never be the strongest, fastest, or most magical person in a room. Unless I started attending Fellowship of the Sun meetings.

Though I've had more close calls and close encounters with strange kinds than a simple Louisiana barmaid had any right to. And though my days and nights (and consequently nightmares) have gotten way scarier on the whole, I have to admit that I don't think I'd go back and un-invite Bill Compton into Merlotte's and my life if such a thing were possible. Because a lot of the time, the new world he brought with him was downright terrifying but at least there was a place for me in it. And that means more to me than I can say and more, I think, than I've even realized yet.

That being said, I also loved—truly loved—days like this one.

I was freshly washed, shaved, and plucked and going through my closet to pick out an outfit. I felt a pang of regret, for the umpteenth time, over the loss of the Pyramid of Gizeh evening gown. For today's occasion though, that might have been overdoing it.

I selected a dress I'd had a long time and had always loved. It was yellow chiffon and dipped in at my waist but was loose and billowy enough up top to eliminate the ho effect, despite the less than modest neckline. I selected silver earrings and chain since I wouldn't be leaving the house. I was fond of silver but felt guilty wearing it since it was so toxic to a few of my friends. Especially since Bill's poisoning.

When I had my clothes and accessories in place I stepped out of my room to find Amelia already waiting in my bathroom with powders and brushes in easy reach. I usually preferred to apply my own makeup but I'd agreed to let Amelia give it a whirl this one time for the special occasion.

The occasion was _Sex and the City_.

When I'd arrived home the night before, Amelia had still been awake, too absorbed in her studying to notice the hour. This happened more often than you might think. I'd told her about Pam's little episode.

"So she, what, came down with some kind of flu and it made her human?" Amelia asked, temporarily distracted from the tiny print in a big book.

I shook my head. This was what happened when you relayed things word for word without managing to convey the appropriate sarcasm. "I don't know how it happened. She seemed fine when she came in. Maybe a little, you know, hungry, then I turn around and she's going Old Faithful,"

Amelia grinned at my bad joke. Her easy humor was one of the reasons I liked her. "Hmm. And then they just didn't tell you anything when you called?" Amelia was very good at dramatic and exasperated sympathy. Another reason I liked her. "Vampires!"

I also told Amelia that Pam and Eric planned to return to Merlotte's the next night. "And of course, you're working," she said, rolling her eyes. "Eric."

My mouth twitched a little at the invocation. "I think it's more about Pam."

"Mhm," Amelia snorted. "I think he'd poison her himself to have an excuse to see you."

Her opinion of the very vexing Viking in my life was rather accurate if not fully informed. Eric didn't ever seem to think he needed an excuse to do something he wanted to do. "I don't think he'd do that."

_Not to Pam anyway_, I finished silently.

I don't think I won Amelia over with my argument (though I hadn't exactly tried very hard). But she soon dropped the subject of the evening entirely and decided that what I needed to prepare myself for the next evening was a day entirely devoid of vamp and chock full of female ritual bonding. Thus _Sex and the City_ Day was born.

And all in all, the day, today, turned out to be a blast. Amelia did a daring number with my makeup that really made my blue eyes pop. She also made margaritas in my blender (apologizing that they weren't Cosmos) and produced a too expensive box of chocolates to "enhance the viewing experience." We watched the movie dressed to the nines. It was silly and girly and full of places I had never been. It was perfect junk-food entertainment.

Before I ran upstairs to get ready for work, I threw my arms around Amelia on impulse. "Thanks."

"You needed it." Amelia, always honest, to say the least.

I tossed on a t-shirt and shorts set and visited the bathroom to tone down Amelia's eye makeup a bit. It was too much for anything but a night out in a big city (or a day in front of the TV with your roommate), but I liked it too much to scrub it off entirely.

Amelia offered to come with me, to sniff out any magic that might be lingering in the bar. But I was fairly good at sensing it myself and I hadn't noticed any during Pam's little episode. Neither had Sam. As far as I knew.

My shift started at six, a little too early for vampires but not for the citizens of Bon Temps. It was immediately apparent when I entered through the employee door that there would be another big turnout tonight. It was a Saturday, a fact that always drew a large crowd, and the day before had seen supernatural action.

So when the vampires arrived close to 10 o'clock I noted them by the rush of bliss that accompanied Eric (as surely as it would have accompanied a large cone of my favorite Java Chip ice cream) instead of by sight, due to the crowd. When the vampires entered, a young couple occupying one of the tables took a look at them and realized that they'd like to sit with a group of their friends that they really didn't see often enough these days. Luckily, the table was in my section.

Bon Temps had gotten reasonably used to the supernatural population it hosted and Sam's position as a Shifter tended to keep most of the out and out bigots from the bar. But tonight I could see eyes and feel minds shift toward the Shreveport vampires like the vamps were exhibiting a strange kind of gravity.

I brought two TrueBloods to Pam and Eric with nods of acknowledgment. Eric didn't do more than smile (a smallish, fangless smile that still made my heart skip a bit). I'd have to tell Amelia that I'd been right; they really were here on business. I was relieved to see that both of them looked perfectly dead and even more relieved when I breezed by their table on my way to another and noticed that Pam had finished her TrueBlood and kept it down. I whisked the empty bottle and dirty glass away on my way back to the bar.

"Hey Emma," Sam was saying. "When you run bottles make sure you hold them at the bottoms. Some people get a little finicky if your hands go where they're about to drink. Or take a tray."

"Right," Emma adjusted her grip on four bottles of Rolling Rock. "I work in a bar. I am unclean. The black might rub off." Emma didn't sound nearly as offended as her words implied. Maybe she was making a joke?

"She's doing well tonight," I said to Sam as I heated a blood and filled a pitcher of draft. Earlier, I had called the habitual Merlotte's warning of, "Behind you!" to Emma's back just as she turned around. Both of us were carrying drink-laden trays but Emma managed to hoist hers over mine as we passed one another and all drinks made it safely to their tables.

"Yeah," Sam said. "She'll work out."

Jason must have thought so too because he'd taken to kissing Emma's hand when she brought new beers for him and Hoyt (probably because he knew there'd be hell to pay if he got too fresh with my fellow barmaids). It was Saturday and Jason was drinking pretty hard. When Jillian replaced Emma, Jason didn't seem to notice in the least and the hand smooching continued.

I was running drinks and trying not to notice Eric, who, if I wasn't careful, drew me like north draws a compass. And there was the rub. When compasses find a pole they spin all out of whack and that's just no use to anyone.

So I was busy enough to lose track of Jason's antics until around midnight when he was suddenly on his feet and squaring off with Kit Dawson. Kit was Tray's cousin, and, though he was smaller than Tray had been, his status as a Were made him plenty dangerous. "Outside," Kit growled. I'd missed the beginning of the argument if we were already at the relocation stage.

"You got it!" Jason said back, swaying where he stood.

"Jason!" I shouted, channeling as much of Adele Hale Stackhouse as I could manage. "You sit down this minute!"

"Busy Sook," Jason answered, his voice watery and his syllables slurred. He was drunker than I'd seen him in a while.

I didn't know what the fight was over, but, since Jason was involved, it was a fair bet that it was a woman. I could see that Kit's hands had sprouted an abundance of hair. If I had any doubts as to what kind of fight it would be, they were gone now. I swallowed hard. My brother loved a good fight but I had no idea how he'd fare against a full-blooded Were.

Eric and Pam were sitting on the opposite side of the restaurant. I wondered if they'd get involved since Jason was my brother and all. Probably not, unless one of the Weres had the bad luck to stomp on their feet. Vampire blood aside, I was no match for my brother or Kit if their blood got up.

"I'm gonna need you boys to calm down," Sam said, stepping out from behind the bar. I'd heard him make this little warning speech several times over my years at Merlotte's. It was usually followed by, "Or take it outside." But tonight Sam left that part out. My Boss gripped the baseball bat he kept behind the bar but I knew Sam was far more dangerous on his own. As a true Shifter, Sam could become any animal he liked, and, if it came to a fight, I didn't think we'd be seeing the collie.

Ignoring Sam, Kit growled a challenge and Jason's fists clenched. Both Weres were tense on their feet though Jason's balance was definitely suffering. _Eric!_ I shouted, even though I knew the bond didn't work like that. Together Eric and Pam could restrain the warring Weres quite easily so, of course, neither of them moved an inch.

"Sit down!" Sam shouted, his voice losing its ever-present calm.

I could see already that sitting down and downing a free round wasn't going to solve the problem. The fighters in question were men and Weres. The watching crowd had come specifically for supernatural excitement and I could hear shouts of encouragement and fear in my head. The Weres couldn't hear what I did but they had to sense the pull of the crowd. And the crowd wanted blood.

By this point I was making none too subtle faces in Eric's direction. He regarded me coolly for several seconds, then shook his head with the barest of motions.

Well fine!

I didn't know if Eric was angry with me or if he found the situation amusing, or he just didn't care, but it was clear that he wasn't going to lift a finger to help. "Jason," I said quietly, sidling up to my big brother. "Jason, come outside with me."

My voice sounded thinner than I anticipated. Even with everything I'd been through, my instincts knew it wasn't a good idea to attract the attention of an angry Werewolf. Hair was sprouting from Kit's face now and his hands were starting to look more like paws. He was changing deliberately slowly, trying to intimidate Jason with the wait.

"That's not a good idea Sookie. Dawson'll follow you out." Sam had slid up next to me and was cautiously putting himself between Kit and me.

"Kit Dawson wouldn't hurt a lady," I said, more to Kit than to Sam.

_What's she doing?_

_Stay out of it bitch!_

_They're gonna fight!_

_Jason Stackhouse, you're gonna get it!_

The spectators had certainly registered my presence but Kit didn't look like he heard me at all. I remembered Quinn telling me once how easily rage took a Were over. I didn't want that rage spilling over onto the people of Merlotte's. Myself included.

I felt a twinge of uncertainty. Eric. _Good,_ I thought with absurd pettiness. If he wasn't going to help, let him be anxious until the cow's came home. The fact that I wasn't too nervous myself since I was quite certain he'd snatch me away before any blows could land took the wind out of my sails some. "Come on Jason. Outside." I wasn't sure why my brother hadn't moved out on his own. Maybe it was because he was having trouble standing.

"That's not a good idea," Sam said more loudly. Then through clenched teeth, "He can't change, Sookie."

"What?"

"Jason. He can't change. Look in his head."

Confused, I did as I was told. _Well, fuck me. Drunk as a skunk. What'd I do to Dawson to make him so __mad? Been a long time since I had a good fight. Why's he so mad?_

Jason's thoughts were just like they'd been for the first thirty years of his life. He was human.

Before I had time to process that thought, all the motion began at once. Kit, eyes gone yellow, charged. Sam grew rapidly as he stood in front of Jason and I. Jason threw his hands up, maybe in front of me or maybe haphazardly because he was drunk but I was already several feet away, as I knew I'd be, and kicking at Eric's shins. "Stop that," he said but I gave him one or two good elbows to the ribs before running out of sufficient anger.

Kit's first half-clawed punch caught Jason on the cheekbone and my brother went down like a sack of potatoes. Sam was becoming something large and toothy and I wondered what photo he'd glanced at behind the bar.

Kit hauled Jason up by the collar. As he was winding up for a second blow, Emma appeared beside him. Wide-eyed, she shoved an index finger right into Dawson's mouth and pulled his head back by the cheek. Kit Dawson seemed stunned by the action as if the surprise of a woman half a foot shorter than him cramming her finger between his teeth was just the thing to cut through the haze of rage.

Before Kit could recover, Sam completed his change and tackled the Were with several pounds of tawny lion. I'd never seen Sam, who overwhelmingly preferred canines, take a lion's shape.

Kit went down hard.

Maybe it was the adrenaline in my system, I wasn't sure, but my eyes focused on the details of Kit's features as he hit the floor. The hair retracted from his face and his paws became hands again. Even the Were strength seemed to desert him and his body fell almost limply. I would have thought he'd been knocked out and forced back to his human shape if it weren't for his voice screaming, _What the fuck!_ in my head.

Jason struggled for his balance since there was a sudden lack of Wolf bearing down on him. Emma grabbed the baseball bat Sam had dropped and stood over Kit like she was ready to give him a good whack if he thought about getting up again.

Sam shook out his mane and padded quickly into the office, returning bare minutes later in a spare set of clothing. He relieved Emma of her charge and escorted Kit out of the bar by the elbow. Kit looked small and frightened. _What's happening?_ Sam was scowling but he seemed to be speaking quietly to Kit. Sam's thoughts at least were still as snarled as ever.

Emma wiped her bloody finger on her apron and went to guide Jason to a seat. Probably as much because people were staring and she felt the need to do something as because she wanted to help my brother.

"She fish-hooked him," I said to no one in particular, a term I'd learned Jason when he used to relive high school brawls at the breakfast table.

"That she did," Eric said and I glanced up at him to see him exchanging looks (if slight changes in facial expression could really be called looks) with Pam. If I didn't know better I'd think they were communicating the way Sophie-Anne had done with her children.

When I pulled myself away from Eric (you'd think that would get easier, right?) to check on my brother, Eric extended a hand, a most human gesture, to Emma. "Eric Northman," he said, laying on about as much charm as I'd ever seen him use. Short of a glamour anyway.

Emma nodded but didn't take his hand. I remembered how uncomfortable she'd seemed to learn that some of the patrons were vamps. "What was that?"

"Eric." He repeated, a little more loudly.

"Eric?" Emma said. "Eric." She looked like she was trying to work her mouth around the word, like it didn't taste right. OK, maybe it didn't look quite like that but that's what I was getting from her thoughts.

"Sam!" Jillian called because our boss had not come back and the patrons were getting restless. "Sam!"

_That's closer_, Emma thought.

"Emma Asli," she said finally.

Eric nodded and turned to go.

"That it then?" Emma asked.

"Yes."

Pam had come closer during the brief exchange, standing a few yards out of the way and beyond notice. Well all notice but mine.

I knew the instant she became human again. In my head her voice said, _He was right._


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**CHAPTER 4**

"Just you wait a minute, buddy!" I called to Eric's retreating back.

"I am not your 'buddy'." Eric replied without turning around. We had been buddies once but the kind of buddies that were paired with an adjective that has several letters in common with 'fire truck.'

Oh, no you don't, Mister. I followed the two vampires, well the vampire and Pam, out to the parking lot. Eric already stood by his cherry red Corvette, arms crossed, waiting for Pam or for me, I couldn't tell which.

"You want to know why the puppy lost his tail," Eric said when I invaded his personal space, hands on my hips.

"I'm not an idiot," I replied, proud that I was a step ahead of him, or, at least, not one behind. "It's Emma. She touched both of them. Maybe it has to be her hand and maybe their mouths had to be involved but it happened when she touched them." I had about a thousand and one questions jostling in my mind but I didn't want to hurt my upper hand by drawing attention to what I didn't know. Like how Pam got involved. "And she knows too," I added. "She fish-hooked Kit and she wouldn't touch you."

"Close," he said imperiously.

I kept my hands planted firmly on my hips, trying not to tap my foot in agitation. He was definitely enjoying this.

"You've seen the, what do you say…?"

"Peak of the glacier," Pam offered helpfully.

"Peak of the glacier."

It took me a beat to figure out that they weren't being literal. I tried really hard not to smile. I really did. "Tip of the iceberg," I corrected. "So what's under the water?"

Eric's head cocked a little to one side. "I don't understand."

"Only the very top of an iceberg shows above the water," I explained. "The huge part of it under the water is the part that will wreck your ship."

"Ah," Eric said, actually sounding interested. "I assumed it was nonsensical, as English idioms tend to be."

"It's a metaphor actually," I said and right then the absurdity of the situation (a barmaid explaining English grammar to two ancient vampires after she'd nearly seen her brother get torn apart by a Werewolf) hit me. "This is not why I came out here."

Eric nodded. "You already figured it out." He smirked.

"The tip," I said.

"The tip," he agreed.

"Is she a witch?" Now that that upper hand was long gone, I might as well ask.

"No," Pam said.

OK. "Some kind of fae?" I knew there were plenty of things other than fairies out there and some of them were undoubtedly trapped here now that their homeland had developed a strict new anti-emigration policy.

"No," Pam said again, rather gleefully.

"This isn't why you came out here," Eric reminded me. I thought of several snide responses but he was right so I kept them to myself.

Pam looked a little disappointed that our game of twenty questions wouldn't continue.

Forcing my mind and emotions back to the offense at hand, I drew myself up and gave Eric a punch to the shoulder with the side of my fist. "Why didn't you help my brother?" I gave him another whack for emphasis. I was feeling violent today, apparently. That was new.

I never saw him move but suddenly Eric's left hand was clasped around both my wrists. "You're beginning to make a habit of this." His icy tone said what he thought of the habit just in case the manacle of flesh didn't get the point across.

When we were children and I got fired up enough to take a swing at Jason, he used to do this—pin me, so I couldn't fight back. I found I still hated it with the fury of a ten-year-old girl. So when I spoke again my voice sounded ugly with anger in my ears. "Why didn't you help him?"

Eric shrugged, a gesture I could see more than feel in the faint sodium light in the parking lot. "Breaking up spats between Shifters does not fall inside the parameters of our relationship."

"What relationship?" I said bitingly. "I promised not to screw anyone else. That's not a relationship."

He didn't say anything. Not, "You're killing me," as he had said once before. Not even an apologetic, "Sookie." He only turned his head and Pam made a show of getting in the car. "It doesn't matter. I'm finished," I said.

I turned to go back into Merlotte's, anger strengthening my resolve to not think about Eric Northman again for as long as was possible. It wouldn't be long, I knew. The damned blood bond was as much a disability as telepathy had ever been.

I turned, but Eric still held my wrists. "Eric, let me go," I said with resignation. He would hold me here as long as he wished and there was nothing I could do about it.

Still, he said nothing.

"Let me go." Against my own logic, I struggled. "Let me go!"

And then I was shouting. "You pretend to care about me!" I yelled in his face. "But you won't pretend to care about the people I care about! You knew Jason couldn't change. You knew! But you just sat there and ran your little … experiment!" Even as I shouted I realized I was right.

I raged and Eric was still. "Why didn't you help him? Why didn't you help my brother?" I was fighting his grip now like a woman possessed. "Why didn't you help me? Why didn't you help me? _Why didn't you help me?_"

When I finally heard my own words, I was slumped, boneless, against his chest. I'd shouted the question too many times to count. It had become an angry white noise, devoid of sense. And then I found myself leaning against his silent frame. His arms were around me and my hands were pinned between our bodies. _Why didn't you help me?_

It all came back to this. I raged at him for a smelly little shack in the middle of the countryside. I raged for the poison in Bill's blood and for Tray Dawson, slowly dying of his wounds. And I raged for myself most desperately, for the part of me that was still trapped in the dark at the hands of Lochlan and Neave, calling to him with my dying thoughts.

I raged and I called and he didn't come.

I saw terrifying swirls of color and images my brain couldn't wrap around. _Why?_ The word was laden with a poisonous ire that I couldn't have mustered. Angry as I was, it was too big for me and in the split second I felt it, it almost swallowed me whole.

"You didn't come for me," I said against his chest through angry tears and the shudders that overtook me when I chanced to glance a vampire mind. "You want me to trust you but you didn't come for me."

He held me close with one arm while the opposite hand stroked my hair mechanically. For once, the closeness did nothing to lessen my anger. I had never been so aware that his was a cold, dead body.

I pulled away with only the effort it took to it push past his hands and support my own body weight. I dried my eyes with the back my hand and waited a moment for my hiccupping sobs to stop.

"Sookie," Eric said finally, but his heart, dead as it was, wasn't in it.

I shook my head emphatically. "No." I barely recognized my own voice. "Don't come back here again. Don't talk to me. Don't call me. Don't come to my house. You won't be welcome."

"I understand."

"You don't need to understand. You just need to stay away."

I nodded once and turned my back to him. A nod was enough for so many things in the vampire world. It was hello, how are you, I love you. Let it be enough for goodbye, then, as well.

Everyone in Merlotte's would know I was upset since I'd not been blessed with lovely tears. My eyes were red, I was sure, and my face was puffy and had long black streaks of mascara remembering the tears down my cheeks. I walked into the bar with my head high, hardly seeing anyone there, and went straight for the restroom to wash the last tears I had for Eric off my face.

I felt free, I suppose, of a burden I'd been carrying for months now. It seemed long ago now, Eric and I had been cautious friends and, very briefly, lovers. That was the foundation of our relationship. It was what we were to one another and complicated enough on its own.

Then the blood bond came along like an earthquake, shifting the ground beneath us, changing the rules. We had responsibilities to one another. When Lochlan and Neave appeared and tortured me in that horrible little shack, and when Bill and Niall rescued me, Bill and Niall but not Eric, it was like a crack in the foundation. It was confusion and betrayal. It was a crack that couldn't be smoothed over by forced affection or great sex.

Something had split deep down and the flood waters were rushing in.

Tied as I was to Eric, there was little I could think to do to protect myself. I'd asked him not to speak to me and repealed his invitation into my house. These restrictions were partly to give me time to think outside of his influence and partly to keep him from (excuse my language) fucking me into forgiving him.

"Sookie."

I jumped. I hadn't noticed Emma come into the bathroom. She was not an especially loud projector. "Sorry. I just wanted to tell you that I'm taken," She said. "And I mostly prefer women anyway. So … I mean, if it had anything to do with …."

I didn't know if I wanted to slap her or to hug her. The slap would be for the offensive suggestion that I would get so worked up over some kind of petty jealousy. The hug would be for the assumption that my problems with men were as simple as that. How I wished they were. "No. You didn't do anything." Nothing to Eric anyway.

I'm not sure what expression was on my face but poor Emma looked terribly confused. _Wait, the vampire's not your man?_

"I'm not his," I confirmed.

"Oh." If possible Emma looked even more puzzled. _Well that really sucks for him because he wants you bad._

"You're not helping."

"Sorry."

I stared at the girl hard. She fiddled with a lock of dark, coarse hair under the intensity of my gaze. I knew what she was, or at least, what she could do. And now, unless, she was truly dense, she had to suspect a little something about me. "Well, whatever happened," Emma said eventually, "let me know if I can do anything to help. If you want to go, Jillian and I can cover."

They probably couldn't, but it was a well-intentioned lie. I checked myself in the mirror one more time. Not great but a little better. I caught Emma's eye in the reflection. "What you can do," I began and she nodded encouragement. "You see him come in here again, you shake his hand."

Emma smiled a smile that was a hair bolder than nervous. OK.

When we exited the bathroom, I threw myself into the swing of the evening. There was a half-hour of artificial rush that had been created when first one and then two barmaids had left the floor for several minutes. I filled orders, slung mugs, and smiled for tips like my life depended on it.

Like any time I managed to make a scene in public, I had to put up with the constant commentary of Merlotte's patrons. Their thoughts generally fell into two categories: "maybe that'll teach her" and "I wonder what he's like in bed." Emotionally exhausted as I was, not even constant motion kept them all at bay and soon after the rush abated, I was feeling more than a little frayed.

"Loud in here tonight," I declared to no one in particular as I waited for Antoine to add a slice of cheese to a burger.

"I'm down a large order of fries," Emma called, standing beside me at the service window.

"Got it," Antoine said. And then to D'Eriq, "Drop those in the oil for me."

"Here Sookie, you look thirsty," Emma said, and plucked a glass of water off her tray, pressing it on me.

"No, I'm OK."

Emma didn't budge. She winked. _Oh, right._ Not entirely sure what to expect, or if it was a good idea, I took the glass Emma offered, making sure to brush my fingers against hers in the transfer. There was a film of somebody else's lipstick already on the straw, I grimaced and took a sip, hoping the lipstick was Emma's at least.

The effect was not complete but it was immediate. It was like the show had started and a hush fell over the crowd. I released a breath I hadn't realized I was holding and took another swig. "Thanks for the water," I said, whisking my corrected burger away before I had time to get too emotional with gratitude.

Later, when the crowd had dwindled in the minutes before closing time, I stood at the counter, rolling silverware with Jillian Boucher (she pronounced it Boo-shay, and then giggled because it's French). You're really pretty," she said as an opener.

I smiled despite myself. That was something that was never unpleasant to hear. "Thanks."

"How old are you anyway?" Jillian asked.

"I'm twenty-seven," I said. It would be twenty-eight next month.

"Oh. Well you look even younger," Jillian said. Jillian was eighteen. "And that … guy, he's gotta have, like, what, a thousand years on you?" She thought she was exaggerating. She shrugged. "So, fuck him."

I grinned, assuming she meant it as an insult, not a suggestion.

_Glamorous, Merlotte's may not be, but I liked it here._


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**CHAPTER 5**

As I drove home that night, I couldn't quite stop my better self from having her say.

It's come to my attention in recent years that I have a temper. And that temper, once raised, is a formidable thing. In the months since the fairy war, I tried very hard to forget about all I'd been through. I visited Bill (something I'd thought I'd never do again) and didn't think about who had injured him so grievously. I caught hints of sadness in Amelia's eyes and thoughts and remembered Tray but not how he'd died.

Mostly I didn't think about the pale, patchy scars that mottled the once flawless skin of my legs or the faint lines that decorated much of my torso in very deliberate patterns. I'd had too many injuries to count over the past three years and I let the cause of these, the most recent ones, roll and fade into all the other violence I'd encountered.

By the same token, I'd tried very hard not to think about the things for which I'd so heavily abused Eric earlier. It hurt too much to remember that he hadn't come. And that, on top of all the other physical and emotional pains, was far too much to bear. For the most part, my brain slid over memories of the Fairy war as if that day had been frozen over and moved to store somewhere else, somewhere away from my real life.

I'd managed to think about it so little, in fact, that I'd never once imagined up any excuses for why Eric hadn't been there. It was my natural reaction (bred into me from a young age) to do my best to consider things from the other person's perspective. Gran used to say, "God hates a grudge. And if you cant stand in someone else's shoes and take a look at the problem then you're the one that needs to ask for forgiveness."

Eric had told me, just before the battle broke out, that there was a reason he didn't come for me and that he would tell me so I'd understand. Driving home, I was still too hurt by the emotional wounds (ones my own mind had wisely protected me from for so long) to think what his reasons might be, but, at least, I knew I should _try _to think of some.

So I was dwelling pretty thoroughly in my own misery as I drove home. Oddly enough, the thing that helped me to shake the pending despair and to keep me from an all out tailspin was an attack of a little phobia I'd developed recently.

The parish road that leads to my house is heavily wooded right up to the road. Scant feet ahead of me, in the beam of my headlights, I saw a fox break the cover of the trees and dart out into the road. I slammed on my brakes with the sickening feeling that it was too little and too late.

I put my car in park and hopped out, leaving the engine running. I feared the worst- that the fox had been someone I knew, Tanya Grissom (or, heaven forbid, Sam!) came to mind. This had happened once before, several weeks earlier. I hadn't been able to find a body, human or animal, and spent several hours searching the dark forest by flashlight.

This time I saw stains on a hubcap that looked black in the low light and a dark shape partly under my rear tire. I took the flashlight from my trunk and double-checked. Sure enough, the fox lay dead, its little body mangled and broken. Relief flooded me. PETA would never accept me as a member but the fox was just a fox and not a human being so I was okay with that.

Perhaps the immense amount of fear that had passed through me in those few minutes left me feeling a little tied to the dead creature. I reversed my car a few inches and then used the ice scraper that I kept in the trunk to move the dead fox off the road. It reminded me of my cat, Tina, that Renee Lenier had killed.

And then, as if my brain had been working away at it beneath the surface, I understood something about Eric that I'd been too upset to process before.

The anger hadn't been mine. At least, not all of it.

Here, on my own, I still felt angry. But more than anger, there was a remembered feeling of abandonment. Under stress (like the events of this evening) that feeling could probably be worked up into rage. But the deluge of rage that had carried me away in Merlotte's parking lot? That was Eric's.

I knew I was right. It fit what I knew about myself and the brief flash I'd seen of Eric's mind—that crazed fury that had almost consumed me.

Eric had been furious. And though I wouldn't put it past him to be angry with me for nearly getting myself killed, I was quite certain that he was angry with himself. Whatever the reason that he hadn't come for me then, it seemed that the excuse wasn't good enough for _him_.

Guilt wasn't something Eric (or most any vampire for that matter) seemed to feel easily. Times when he upset me, he seemed sorry that I felt that way—as if he himself were not the cause of my distress.

Anger was much more natural for him.

I was pulling into my driveway before I even noticed that I had begun driving again. After a moment of disorientation (and another moment in which I tried to remember if I'd put the ice scraper back in the trunk or left it on the side of the road), I realized that my revelation hadn't made the situation any less complicated.

If Eric's anger with himself was so great that, through our blood bond, it forced me to break off ties with him, then it would be no easy task to convince him to forgive himself. And, said a nasty little voice, if he thought he had a reason to be so angry with himself, then maybe I had a reason to be angry with him too.

I sighed, letting my head fall against the steering wheel. It was a good thing my car was old and the horn hard to trigger or else I probably would have woken Amelia.

Eventually I trudged up to the house, utterly exhausted. I made it through the motions of preparing for bed only because I knew them so well. I resolved to let my excommunication of Eric hold for a week or two. We could both use the time to cool down.

My eyes were gritty and sore from all the angry tears I'd shed over Eric Northman. But as they drifted closed the thought flitted across my mind that, despite my best efforts, I was already in the process of forgiving him.

###

Early that morning, just before waking, I dreamed.

In the dream I stood between Eric and Andre. Andre's face was an impassive mask. His features were so blank that he didn't even look like himself. He reached out a hand to me and I knew if he touched me I would die.

Eric was kneeling before Andre but his eyes were hard with defiance. "Let me do it, master," he said. Eric was wearing a Fangtasia t-shirt. I noticed this as he reached right through me to grab a hold of my insides. I screamed.

I screamed long and loud. All the while I was lucid enough to wonder how I wasn't managing to wake myself up.

Then Bill appeared, stepping out of the nothing that lay outside the dream, his face contorted in rage. "You'll never be free while he lives," Bill said, and in a movement that was horrifically slow by vampire standards, Bill drew a knife, the one used in vampire marriage ceremonies, across Eric's throat.

Then I screamed loud enough to wake myself up.

###

In the three weeks that passed after my fight with Eric in the parking lot, my life almost seemed normal. I went to work, I cleaned my house, I sunbathed. Since we had several shifts in common, I discovered that I liked both Jillian and Emma quite a lot.

Jillian was a little hapless. She was friendly and open, She laughed easily and took a good bit of (unwanted) male attention away from me even though, in my honest (if not overly kind) opinion, she was prettily young rather than actually pretty.

Emma on the other hand was lovely in a way that snuck up on you. She was the product of a racial blend that I couldn't even begin to parse out and the effect was interestingly exotic. There was a worldliness about her and she was quick to act, though words seemed to be difficult for her sometimes.

Perhaps it wasn't the wisest course of action but I decided not to press her about whatever _talent_ she had that seemed to short out supes. After all, I had a talent of my own and certainly didn't appreciate snooping. It was one of my more Christian moments. Or maybe I was just selfish and I didn't want to be involved when someone with power taook too much interest in Merlotte's newest barmaid.

I did learn a little more about her … oddity, inadvertently. A week after the incident with Eric, I asked Emma how she liked working at Merlotte's. She'd been here two weeks by then (or was it three?) and I figured it was time to suss out whether she'd be sticking around or not.

'Yeah, I like it fine," Emma said with a brief smile but there was doubt in her voice.

"But?"

Emma smiled for real. Caught. "Um, I just get the feeling Sam doesn't like me very much." She paused in turning a chair down (we had the opening shift). I got the feeling that she wasn't used to being disliked. I guess her gift is easier to hide and freaks out fewer people than mine.

"Oh," I dropped my voice a little. Sam was in his office after all. "I don't know if anyone told you, but Sam's a Shifter. He's probably just a little… nervous around you. He's used to being able to change whenever he likes. If you touch him …."

"Does he know?"

"I didn't tell him," I said, which was true. "But I wouldn't be surprised if he figured it out. He's a smart guy."

Emma nodded. "You know, it doesn't work like that. Just touching them." I didn't say anything and Emma continued. Maybe she was in a confiding mood or maybe she was hoping I'd pass the information along to Sam. "It's a kind of closeness. They need to um, _perceive_ me with all five senses."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Sight and hearing are easy. Smell isn't hard either, especially with Shifters and vamps."

I nodded. "What about Pam? You know, the female vampire?"

Emma looked down at the chair she'd just turned. "I must have touched her when I was seating them."

I nodded again. She was pretty touchy, especially in close conversation. "Taste?"

"The bottle," Emma answered immediately. "I touched the rims of both of them when I was handing them to you. My palms were probably sweating a little. It was enough."

"Wow."

Emma gave a long-suffering eye roll. "Yeah."

I moved behind the bar to check stock. Maybe we shouldn't be talking about such personal things in the relatively open space but Emma didn't seem to mind. "Pam and Eric," I said. "You didn't realize they were vampires."

She shook her head. "I didn't know what's-his-name … Kit was a Were either. I wasn't sure anyway. I took a guess." My eyes must have been huge. Kit had been partially changed. "I can't see them," she explained, not making anything clearer. "I can't see what's off about them—different from human. Kit just looked like a really pissed off guy to me. I only knew something was up because everyone else was so scared."

"What about Sam?"

"He looked like Sam."

"That must be kind of dangerous for you." Our first patrons of the day would arrive soon and I'd already learned more than I'd intended to learn.

She shrugged. "Vamps can't bite me unless I don't have a chance to scream. Same with the Shifters. Claws are a different story, of course." Her delicately shaped eyes looked far away. "I can see … other things about them."

Right then the front door open and Mr. and Mrs. Bart Williston took their regular table for lunch. I didn't try to revive the interrupted conversation.

Two weeks later, I was doing a pretty decent job of not thinking about the supernatural world. Other than a few faint twinges, my bond with Eric was uncharacteristically silent. I found not thinking about him was a little easier than impossible and I might have done even better than that if my early morning dreams had not become a regular occurrence.

The basic scenario was always the same. Eric and Andre faced off. Eric grabbed me by the guts, or the heart, or reached right inside my head. Then someone stepped up to kill him and free me. Often that person was Bill or Sam. Sometimes it was Jason or Quinn. Once it was even my Gran, savagely beheading Eric with his own sword.

I always woke up screaming to the point where Amelia's forced entry into my room in the morning had almost become more of a courtesy than anything else.

I was dwelling on the prospect of yet another dream as I pulled up to my house one night when my cell rang.

"Eric did not ask me to call you," Pam said, instead of going with a socially recognized greeting.

"OK."

"You need to forgive him." How very Pam of her.

"Pam, it doesn't work like that—"

"He slept for three days and nights straight."

I drew a sharp breath. Vampires didn't sleep like that unless they were wounded and healing.

"I could not rouse him. Not even to eat."

"How did you get him to wake up?"

"Felicia disappeared. He needed to mount a search. Also, we needed someone to fill in as bartender."

"He woke up to tend bar."

"Yes."

It shouldn't have been funny, especially not if Felicia was missing. But the idea of Eric waking out of the dire need for a bartender was just too absurd. I bit back a smile. Eric _would_ break a sleep strike, or whatever it was, for Fangtasia.

"Have you found Felicia?"

"That's not the point."

Vampires. "Have you?"

"Not yet." Pam had the courtesy to pause for a beat before seizing control of the subject again. "You need to forgive him. I cannot tolerate him like this. It has ceased to be amusing."

Pam very nearly sounded like she was whining. "Serves you right," I replied. Pam had taken a wicked delight in teasing Eric about me.

"Will you see him?"

"He hasn't exactly tried to see me."

"You told him not to," Pam reminded me. As if I had forgotten.

I considered the situation. I understood how I felt about Eric less than I ever had before, less even than the time he'd lost his memory and fallen in love with me. "I don't know Pam."

Pam took a pause of her own. Then, out of left field, "The girl, Emma Asli. She is human. Very, very human."

"What does that mean?"

"Ask Eric," Pam suggested.

_Pam._


	6. Chapter 6

**Discaimer:** If it's legal details you seek, please see part 1.

**Note:** This one takes a bit of time to get where it's going. Sorry for the glacial pace.

**Chapter 6**

I sighed, long and loud, like the pressure of air in my lungs was too much for my body to handle.

I felt bone-weary and deep-fried. The latter was a result of a few too many trips into Merlotte's kitchen. The former was a result of so many things that even trying to count them up made me more tired.

There was the death of Tray Dawson. The death of Claudine, my cousin and veritable fairy-godmother. The loss of my great-grandfather, who was not dead but who was so inaccessible to me that it was as if he were. The constant tension between my friends, the Shifters, and my friends, the vampires. A barmaid who could very well put both in danger (yes, though I'd taken a no-nosing stance toward Emma, the fact that she might get someone killed had not escaped me). My brother's status as a werepanther who had managed to upset all the other local werepanthers. And of course, my ability to reminded constantly about all these things by the people around me.

If my ability were something that could be bought, I'd have the perfect slogan. Telepathy: The most sure fire way to lose friends and end up smack-dab in the middle of problems you never knew you had!

Okay, so maybe that's a little ungainly as slogans go. It's a working model.

On top of it all was a big, dumb Viking. I almost laughed. _On top of it all._ He'd love to hear that. Though he would definitely take exception to 'dumb.'

I knew, when Eric took my blood (and I, his) in Rhodes, things would change. Though I hadn't had any idea how profoundly the bond would affect me on the local scale, I did actually, for once, see the bigger picture. I wasn't just getting a tie to Eric Northman, ancient vampire and Sheriff of Area Five. I was getting roped to the whole vampire world too. What a bargain.

"One day I'm going to hang from that rope," I muttered, turning to lock the front door behind me. "Watch Sookie swing."

"What?" I hadn't noticed Amelia on the stairs. She must have been coming down as I was coming in.

"Nothing," I said, fighting with the key in the lock. Not even that could be easy. "Vampires." I considered a moment and revised my statement. "Men."

"Eric," Amelia said brightly, as if we were playing a guessing game. I couldn't bring myself to give her a winning ding.

"You're up late."

"Couldn't sleep," she said and proceeded to the kitchen, presumably to make some kind of sleep-inducing tea.

I followed her in, knowing that, tired as I was, I wouldn't be able to sleep yet. Despite everything else, the disappearance of Felicia was nibbling the back of my mind and Sookie the sleuth was trying to rear her ugly head. Supes seemed to vanish with alarming frequency. The fact that Felicia's disappearance was not exactly out of the norm (as far as I was concerned) didn't having any bearing on whether she was safe or not.

The fact that Felicia had gone missing under Eric's nose did not bode well. I found it hard to believe that Felicia could be casually missing (if anyone could be said to be casually missing). I had rather strong convictions that if you were a vampire under oath to Eric and you decided to head off for a pilgrimage to Transylvania, you okayed it with the boss first.

"You want to talk about it?" Amelia said, interrupting the beginnings of a train of thought that would inevitably lead me into another predicament.

"I don't even want to talk to _him_ about it," I replied, smiling as best I could in hopes that Amelia wouldn't take it personally.

Amelia nodded and very considerately changed the subject. "There's a new guy in the office," she said.

"Oh yeah?" I encouraged politely.

Amelia told me all about Stuart, a claims investigator, who sounded nice, and handsome, and boring. Maybe my friend, after Bob, Pam, and then Tray, was becoming more sensible and subdued in her tastes in romantic partners. If only I could follow suit.

I nodded along with polite interest. And then found myself actually paying close attention to her tales of work place flirtation. What can I say? Amelia's enthusiasm is contagious.

It was almost 3am before either of us was ready to turn in for the night. Since I had another late shift tomorrow and Amelia had a regular nine to five, she would be the one paying for it in the morning. Still, she peeked her head in my room when Jason took a battle-axe to Eric's neck like he was chopping firewood and I woke up clawing at my sheets.

The worst thing about recurring nightmares is that you know they're coming and your knowing doesn't help one little bit.

I tried very hard, as soon as consciousness returned to me, to stifle my screams in my pillow (I was powerless for a few seconds after waking to stop them) but Amelia faithfully made her way down the stairs every morning just to be sure that it was another dream and not something worse. The boy who cried wolf would have faired much better if he'd had a roommate like Amelia.

"You okay?" Half her face was visible through the barely opened door.

I nodded, catching my breath.

Amelia's eyebrow, at least the one I could see, drew down with concern. She'd offered several spells and elixirs in the first week of my nightmares. I'd let her try the ones she seemed most confident in but nothing had worked. "I don't think it's magical," she'd admitted sadly.

As if my nightmares being a result of some strange magical attack would have been comforting.

Despite its unpleasant start, my day rolled out in fine fashion. I'd been waking up earlier these days. This was partly due to the fact that I screamed myself awake shortly after the sun came up and partly because, noticing this pattern, I'd begun sort of willing myself to get up earlier in vain hopes that I might wake up before the nightmares could get me. Anyway, it meant I had a little more time on my hands since the prospect of going back to sleep after being woken in such a manner was very unappealing.

I've always liked to stay busy and little after shocks of the dreams seemed to seize my memory if I was idle too long. The result was that in the last month or so I'd become a very productive person.

I ate a bowl of cereal and then drove forty-five minutes to a greenhouse and plant nursery that was off the highway toward Monroe. There, a friendly old man who was much happier than I to be up with the sun helped me pick out a sapling that would do well in the partial shade of my backyard. He told me how deep to dig, gave me some fertilizer, and we worked out a plan of action to help my sapling survive its transition to open Louisiana soil.

After driving the forty-five minutes (actually it was closer to an hour since, by then, I was hitting the morning rush hour traffic) I arrived home and changed into what I thought of as yard work clothes. After working at Merlotte's for so long my hair practically put itself up in a no nonsense ponytail, reminding me with scents of beer and peanut oil that it needed to be cleaned.

I'd felt vaguely self-conscience about stepping into public in a generally ungroomed state. But I had every intention of planting the little tree in my yard that morning and I couldn't justify two showers in the span of a few hours.

I took a shovel from the tool shed and chose a spot that I thought was a few feet away from where Bill and I had buried my cat, Tina. Digging the hole should be a perfect distraction from the morning's dream. Even as I started to dig I could still feel a small but deep remnant of the terror I'd felt this morning.

Breaking through the top layer of grass and loam was sweaty work but my muscles weren't really put to the test until I hit a pocket of tough, southern clay. The stuff was reddish and sticky. Under my shovel it felt like rock that hadn't managed to solidify all the way. It was full of actual rocks too. Every time I hit one with the shovel blade I said a little prayer that I'd been right in my judgment of distance and hadn't accidentally come upon what was left of my cat.

Over an hour later I thought I had a big enough hole and, with much heaving and many apologies, I introduced my tree to its new home. I'd discovered, when moving it from my car, that the little thing was much heavier than it looked. It was only fair though. I was much stronger than I looked.

After I'd replaced the soil, gave the sapling a healthy does of water, pushed some fertilizer sticks into the ground, and spent sufficient time admiring my work, I headed off for that much needed shower.

Sweaty work improves showers like hunger improves home-cooked meals. It doesn't improve them nearly as much as having someone to share the shower with does, of course, but the morning's efforts did add a certain amount of glory to the cool water.

After that I got back in my car and headed for the public library. Yep my days got progressively more normal in inverse proportion to the amount of time I spent involved in the supernatural world.

Naturally, after I had this thought I glanced up at my rear-view mirror, like a good driver should from time to time, and because the mirror had been knocked off its usual tilt, I caught a glimpse of myself, blood pouring from my neck. I pulled to side of road with a screech of tires and slammed the car into park.

Staring at the mirror with horror, I reached up with both hands to stem the unprecedented flow of blood. The blood leaked between my fingers like they weren't even there. With a frustrated cry, I pulled my hands away and was about to whip off my shirt so I could use it to staunch the wound when I realized that my hands weren't bloody at all.

I shook my head, like my eyes just needed a little jolt to work properly. Had I fallen asleep at the wheel? After I took a moment to ensure that I was awake, I risked another glance in the mirror. There was no blood. When I looked closely at the place it had been I saw two very faint marks that had once been punctures. _Not even Eric's_. _Bill's_. I told my subconscious. _Keep those thoughts to yourself, please. _

Eric liked to bite a little farther south.

With shaky hands, breath, and heart, I eased my car back onto the road. As I made my way to the library, I felt more annoyed than anything. It was bad enough that the dreams made a good night's sleep impossible, now they had to invade my days as well.

Wait… where had that conclusion come from? I thought hard about the vision of myself, wide-eyed and blood-soaked. Yes, it _had_ come from a dream, but from one I hadn't remembered until now. Memory of that nightmare refused to come within my reach and I could not elaborate on what I had seen. But the certainty that this was a dream I dreamt settled on me and refused to budge. Great.

As I was narrowing down my book options to the most promising three, I got a call from Sam. It was almost noon by this point and the supply truck had arrived. Unfortunately, Sisco, Merlotte's supplier, had neglected to send a batch of straws. 'I'll go to Wal-Mart and be over as soon as I can," I said before Sam could get around to asking.

"Thanks, Sookie."

Sam insisted that I stay and have a sandwich since I hadn't eaten lunch and my protests that I'd been back in a few hours got me nowhere. So, the afternoon was well on its way by the time I got home again. I checked on my tree, just in case it had changed somehow in the past few hours. It hadn't. Then I decided to tackle the dishes in the dish drainer.

It was almost four o'clock and I had just cracked the first of my newly borrowed novels when Amelia's car crunched up the driveway.

"You're home early," I observed when Amelia opened the back door. I heard Amelia deposit her purse on the kitchen table.

I looked up from my book when she entered the living room and sat down heavily on the couch. She'd half-sat on my feet and I jerked them back to make room for her. Amelia's face was pale and there were circles under her eyes like she'd been worn out running the kids to dance practice and then a soccer game and still had to get dinner on the table.

_This has to stop._ I knew Amelia was thinking about my new way of waking her up in the morning. I was immediately on the defensive, ready to remind her that our late night had probably contributed just as much to her exhaustion as my nightmare had. "My boss told me I could go home early," she said.

"That was nice."

Amelia let her head fall back against the couch and closed her eyes. We had both gotten maybe three hours of sleep. She was quiet so long that I began reading again. When she finally spoke, she'd been planning her words for a long time. "Does it scare you more that Eric has power over you or that someone kills him?"

"Someone killing him," I said immediately.

Amelia raised an eyebrow.

It was a little harder to be sure than my quick response implied but I had known the question she would ask for several minutes.

"Well, I was going to say that if you could figure out what you're afraid of maybe it would help the dreams go. But I guess you already did that."

"Not in so many words." I shrugged. "Maybe knowing will help."

"Sookie," Amelia said with less forethought, giving me less time to prepare. "If it's Eric being hurt or killed that scares you so much then why have you cut him off? Not being around him won't make him any safer and if you saw him sometimes… at least you'd know he was okay."

I hadn't filled Amelia in on the details of our latest fight and she had thus, unknowingly, hit on one of its underlying issues. "I'm only so afraid of him being hurt because of the blood bond."

"Are you sure?"

"No." That one was easy.

Amelia pondered that for a while. "So it's all kind of wrapped up in your head, huh? Being afraid for him and being afraid of yourself because of him?"

Being afraid of myself? I hadn't really thought of it that way. "Yeah. I guess so."

"Hmm," Amelia said and we both knew we weren't any closer to solving the issue of 'Sookie screams at dawn.'

"I have to get ready for work."

At Merlotte's that night I found I kept reaching my fingers up to my neck just to be sure that I hadn't started bleeding. I even ducked back into Sam's office to check that the vision in the mirror hadn't returned.

I was looking in the mirror Sam kept back there on the side of a cabinet and running my fingers over the pale scars on my neck when Jillian said, "I can cover those for you." She was on break and hastily wolfing down chicken strips and fries.

"Hm?"

"They're like a bad tattoo, right? Like getting your guy's name inked right before you split up with him?" She had reached into the drawer of Sam's desk and pulled out her purse.

I guess Jillian took my non-response as agreement because she whipped out a tube of lipstick, some concealer, and a pair of brushes and set to work. She coated the scars in fire engine red lipstick then painted over them with two different tones of concealer, finishing with a pressed powder. "Good thing we have almost the same skin," she said.

The marks had disappeared completely and I couldn't even tell where the makeup began and ended. "Where'd you learn that?"

Jillian grinned. "It's good for hickeys," she said. "And…." She pulled up her shirt and tugged the waist band of her shorts down a few inches. There, on her hip, was the name, "Tommy" inked in elaborate script. "My son's father," she said. "I don't let it see the light of day."

I laughed. "These aren't actually from Eric," I said, still looking at Jillian's impressive work in the mirror. "They're from Bill. I dated him a little while ago."

"You dated another vampire?" Emma, who'd just entered the office, tray still in hand, asked.

"Yeah," I admitted maybe because I'd never had a lot of girlfriends growing up and Emma and Jillian were looking at me like I was the cooler, more experienced girl in the locker room at gym class. "And a Were. Well, two Weres. Sort of."

Jillian gave an impressed whistle. Emma said, "Girl, you are not nearly vanilla enough to be as white as you look." I guess it was compliment.

We then found out that Emma had come into the office to inquire as to why she was the only waitress on the floor and we got ourselves back to work quick.

After work that night I got a shock. Maybe I should have seen it coming but I really didn't.

I was leaving at close to 2am with Emma and Jillian. We exited through the employee door to the parking lot. There, under the security lights, looking for all the world like a model selling Corvettes, was Eric leaning against his car.

He'd parked a respectful distance away from the bar like it was a house into which he hadn't been invited. "We need to speak, you and I," he said in the formal tone that I'd seldom heard him use.

I started to protest, the diplomatic feelings that had been slowly building in me squashed by the prospect of actually facing him again. Coward.

Then I followed his line of sight and realized he wasn't talking to me at all.

Emma looked torn. She glanced between me and the vampire. "Sookie…."

Eric opened the car's passenger door. An unmistakable gesture. "I'm not going to kill you," he said from the driver's side before any of us saw him move.

Emma's back straightened, though whether it was from fear or offense I couldn't be sure. Her thoughts, always well-ordered but well-contained, said resolutely, _I guess I owe it to him_, right before she said the same words aloud, albeit apologetically.

"Then you should go." I replied stiffly, too upset by the scene to even think about asking what she meant. My voice sounded hoarse in my own ears. I hated that he could put me in a strangle hold just by showing up. But that was Eric. He showed up and the world opened at his feet. Or, if it didn't, he quickly taught it better manners.

Eric put the car in reverse before Emma had a chance to close the door. As I watched them speed away, gravel flying up under the expensive tires, I managed to feel a little guilty that I'd sent Emma, who was nearly a friend, off with Eric who'd likely decided she was a danger to him. If he had, then he was a danger to her. And even more so than usual.

"Douche bag," Jillian said and I found myself mildly impressed. Despite all of the casual assumptions a person was likely to make about Jillian Boucher, teenage mother and high school dropout, it couldn't be said that she was a girl that could be carried away by a pretty face. "He came here two nights ago and tried to get her to go with him but she wouldn't."

"Oh?" I said, finding whole sentences elusive.

"It kind of seemed like she wanted to go but like she _didn't_ want to go even more. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah," I said. It didn't really. "He just left when she wouldn't go with him?"

"Yeah," Jillian said. "Makes you think though," Jillian continued. "He came here the first time when you weren't at work. That was probably on purpose." I nodded my agreement. Without ever having asked, Eric did seem to know my schedule. "And he came back when you and Emma would be getting off at the same time. Last time she wouldn't go with him. This time she did."

I didn't nod since, if she had a point, I was missing it.

Jillian shrugged. "Maybe this time it was on purpose too." I poked into Jillian's mind a little, looking for her logic. "It's not like he really wore her down. Maybe he knew she'd want, like, your permission before she went with him." _Maybe he wanted you to give it. _"He's definitely a douche for coming to the place you work to pick up another woman." Her face said she couldn't quite believe what she was saying. "But maybe he isn't actually trying to piss you off."

I gave Jillian a weak smile. Whether Eric was trying to upset me or not, I realized, I was too tired to feel it. I was too tired to be curious. I was too tired to care. I suddenly felt a very strong sympathy with the vampire that had nothing to do with our bond. I wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep for three days.

Of course, I was terrified to sleep.

I fought it so hard that the first dream I had involved me taking cracks at a flock of sheep with a shepherd's staff that looked suspiciously like a candy cane. Other dreams followed, ones I only half-remembered upon waking, but that night, for the first time in weeks, I didn't have nightmares and I didn't wake screaming.

In fact, I didn't wake at all until nearly noon. When I finally pulled my eyes open, it was with the grogginess that besets a person that's had too much sleep all at once. It took me a long time and a lot of hot water to get going that day. Though I had fewer hours in the day on account of my late waking, every one of them seemed to take a great, big stretch toward infinity.

My hours at Merlotte's that night ground through me like a headache and I looked forward to my day off tomorrow even more than I usually did.

Jillian's son was sick and Sam cut her early to go home. So it was just Emma and I there at closing time. Emma flipped her phone open nervously when it announced a text message with a buzz while we were stocking napkin holders. When it was time to leave she couldn't seem to decide if she wanted to hang back or rush out in front of me.

She ended up leaving first but only by a few steps so that she had to turn sorrowful eyes back to me when, at the same time, we saw Eric waiting in the parking lot. I thought she would apologize for taking off in the middle of the night with a person who she (and everyone else) assumed was my boyfriend. But what she said was, "You need to forgive him." I wondered if, wherever they went, she'd been getting pep talks from Pam. "Sookie, you need to. Before he does something he can't take back."

I remembered then that Emma Asli didn't know me especially well. If she did, she'd know that making demands is one of the least effective ways a person can get me to do something. Especially something I'm on the fence about. It's liable, instead, to push me over the opposite way.

"Just go," I said, the weariness rearing its ugly head once more.

With an inclination of her head, almost like a vampire's bow, Emma walked quickly toward Eric's car. When I turned toward my own car they seemed to being staring each other down. Glamour or something else?

I glanced in my rear view mirror as I drove away, maybe checking for blood (yeah, right). What I saw was Eric bending Emma back for a kiss that would have made Vivian Leigh jealous and gotten a great big attaboy from Clark Gable. I knew. I'd been on the other end of one of those kisses.

I drove having what I couldn't even consider denying were pangs of jealousy. I had read about 'pangs' before. What they actually felt like was an old Viking boot stomping down on my liver. Then twisting.

I had told Eric I was finished with him, effectively cut him out of my life. I'd reiterated the decision to Pam and thus to Eric. Why should I be surprised that he would make a point of moving on and that he would do it in my line of sight? And Emma was beautiful, and she was mysterious, and she could be useful to him. These were all traits that Eric liked.

The nightmares didn't come again that night. But it didn't matter, Eric had already grabbed me by the guts and no one had stepped up to cut his throat. Okay, so that's definitely extreme and forced parallelism but I was feeling dramatic.

I woke late again the next day and considered staying in bed with the curtains drawn like Carrie Bradshaw had done in Sex and the City. But then I remembered how pathetic I'd found that scene and hauled my self-pitying butt out of bed.

I ate. I showered. I washed a load of laundry.

I spent a good chunk of that morning in the backyard hanging the laundry in the sun. Gran had relied on the sun to do her drying whenever possible and I found that I kind of enjoyed the chore. The sun never failed to make me feel better. Besides, there were a few outfits I had that shrunk down a little too much for comfort if they were dried by machine.

So I hung clothing and then read in my chaise while I waited for the first round to dry so I could get a second batch up while the sun was still high in the sky.

My next big shock I definitely should have seen coming and I would have to (I think) if I hadn't become so jaded (Thanks Bill). To be fair to myself, the circumstances were against me.

I was sipping iced tea and listening to the Dixie Chicks, just watching my laundry ride the summer breeze when Eric came striding through the sheets.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**CHAPTER 7**

I was lost and confused and quite thoroughly convinced I was dreaming. I blinked and shook my head, thinking the apparition that stood before me in full sunlight would vanish back into the billowing sheets like the blood in the mirror had disappeared from my face.

But this vision of Eric was much more persistent than my bloody neck had been. It would be.

I really couldn't determine what I was supposed to do next. It was like I'd been following a route marked "Directions for Sookie Stackhouse's Life" and suddenly come to the edge of the map. If I'd had more time to think about it, I might have actually asked him to pinch me. But, unfortunately, my mouth caught up with the world before the rest of me did. "You _had_ to kiss her? Like _that?_"

My little yard was filled with the booming roar of his laugh.

Eric might be pink in the cheeks and walking around in daylight. He might be, God help me, breathing. But his laugh was like it had always been, big, loud and contagious. "You couldn't have just shared a spoon?" I added ineffectually since a fit of giggles had me doubled over on the chaise.

"I should have known that was the first thing you'd say to me," Eric said when we'd both caught our breaths. There was more complexity to his voice, like I'd gotten used to hearing the steamrolled version and now the bass notes had kicked in.

I gave him a look to let him know that I was still waiting for an answer but I got distracted by the rise and fall of his chest and it was probably not so withering a stare as I'd intended. "A mutual exchange makes the effect last longer and relieves the necessity of physical proximity to the source." he explained. "Your friend insisted that I would change too quickly for blood to be a viable option." I grinned, picturing Emma trying, with logic, to convince Eric that he shouldn't bite her. In my mind she used diagrams of Pam spewing blood. "I offered to lick her from head to toe and let her return the favor. But she rejected the suggestion out of hand." Eric's mouth turned down in the smallest of frowns. "I think she likes women."

He was serious in his confusion, which made it all the funnier. He responded to my fresh burst of laughter with a look that clearly said I was to blame for this pattern of women turning him down.

Briefly, I considered chucking my iced tea glass at him just to have something to do with all the strange, excited energy that was buzzing around my body. But then I was seized by the sudden fear that he was much more fragile in his present state and it would be very rude to injure him out of … good humor? Joy?

That thought killed a little of the giddiness that had welled up inside me. "Eric, why did you do this?" I asked, my voice firmly locked into serious mode.

"You'd rescinded my invitation to your home and I needed to speak with you," He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. I got the vague sense that he wasn't sure if he should say what he was going to say next. "And I'd hoped that the surprise," he indicated his very large, very alive body, "would make you more inclined to hear me out.

"Plus," his tone dropped its rakish edge and took on something else. "I've never gotten to look at you properly in daylight."

"It might be dangerous. You have enemies." _More than the ones I know about too, I'm sure._

Eric shrugged, unconcerned. A bed sheet obscured half his body and revealed him alive and well or hid him from me by turns like the flourish of a magician's cape. "I don't have so many enemies as you think, Sookie," he replied. "And many of the ones I do have are in their daytime sleeps now. As for the rest, they can hardly have expected that I would choose to become human. Or that I would have the means to do so. What they don't know won't hurt me." He raised a big hand, curling it lightly into a fist as if he were testing to see if it was in working order. "And I am not completely defenseless even if I am not vampire."

_Yeah buddy, try that out for a while before you decide to take on any Weres_, I thought. I knew from experience how far human strength and skill didn't get you in a fight with a supe.

"This is from Emma Asli," Eric said and handed me a scrap a paper like he wanted to complete the task before he forgot about it.

The slip of paper looked like it might have been torn from a business envelope. On it, in the handwriting she used to fill out order tickets at the bar, Emma had written, "Blood does not create."

"Do you know what this means?" I sure as all heck didn't.

Eric's expression did not try to hide the fact that he had (as I expected) read the note. "I didn't come here as her messenger."

I nodded. Back to business. "So why did you?"

"You told me to stay away. And I said I would." It wasn't really an apology. But it was sort of an acknowledgment that he had broken his word. Well, _my_ word that he had agreed to.

"I would have let you in." At least, I would have considered it.

Neither of us knew what to say next. I learned, over the course of my twenty-seven years, to take cues from people's thoughts when an awkward silence needed to be broken. I met Eric's eyes, feeling compelled to try to convey to him what I was about to do. He stared back, doing a good imitation of his own typical lack of expression.

With the brief thought that I must be acting reckless out of shock and perhaps more anxiety than I've ever had approaching a mind, I sought his thoughts.

Nothing.

_What? _My thoughts were the only ones in my head. "I can't hear you," I said with astonishment, taking myself back to the night I met Bill. But, then, Bill had been a vampire.

"You could hear Pam?"

"Yes."

Eric's face was puzzled. It was surprising that his features could take on that set since it was an expression so unfamiliar to him. He approached me slowly, almost warily, and held out his hand, reaching toward me with his fingertips just like that famous painting of God creating Adam.

I touched as little of him as possible, knowing deep in my gut that I was not ready yet to know how a warm-blooded Eric felt. If I expected an electric jolt to pass between us, I didn't get it. No more than usual anyway.

To help me concentrate, I closed my eyes. But the sun was still blazing behind my eyelids, brighter even than it had been in my yard. It took me a very, very long moment to realize that _this_ was Eric's mind.

"You're full of light!" I said in surprise, knowing how ridiculous it sounded. Maybe I really was dreaming. Or maybe Eric was just so taken by the sun that he hadn't seen properly in over a thousand years that he couldn't think of anything else.

That wasn't quite right though. Impressions drifted through the light. Impressions of something dark, and something brighter still, and of a space that was walled off from me. There was pride, so much pride that I thought for while that it and the light were one and the same. There was sadness too, great, deep sadness that rode (unlikely as it seemed) on the back of fear. And finally, rising in a way that seemed, somehow, deliberate, words. _You are very beautiful in the sunlight._

He had definitely thought that _at _me.

"Something's wrong," he guessed.

I let go of his fingers and opened my eyes, blinking to adjust. The sunlight seemed dimmer than it had been. "No," I said. "It's just … Eric I've never encountered anything like your mind."

"But I am human now," he said as if he could solve the issue with sheer pragmatism.

I nodded, thinking that over. "Maybe," I said slowly, "Maybe it's a little like Emma's mind."

"Oh?"

"Not _really_ like it," I emphasized. "It's just, you both … it's like your thoughts don't stray far enough from you for me to hear them. They're too … concise. It's like you have to want me to hear them."

Eric nodded, seeming to accept this. "Emma Asli and I are very old," he said. "Perhaps our thoughts simply know to whom they belong."

It was as good an explanation as any I could come up with.

I think we realized at the same time that Eric's temporary humanity was distracting us from his purpose. And that at least one of us was supposed to be very angry with the other. "I'm not entirely sure how long I have," Eric said without managing to sound like a person who had ever been unsure about anything. Ever.

It was intensely interesting to see how much of the Eric I'd known for almost three years was vampire and how much was just Eric. I was absolutely certain that I'd rather follow him around all day and write lengthy notes on the differences than hear any of what he'd come here to tell me.

"Would you like something to drink?" I blurted, letting my hospitable courtesies protect me like armor.

"Yes," Eric said like he hadn't considered the possibility of thirst. "But then we must talk, Sookie."

"Sure," I said, bolting into the house and popping a TrueBlood in the microwave before I had a chance to think about it. _Oh, sweet Lord, have mercy on my addled brain. _I pulled the lukewarm blood out of the microwave and stared at it, not knowing what to do.

I'd uncapped it since metal and microwaves don't mix, so now it had to be drunk or it would soon go bad. Maybe Eric would turn back soon and be hungry. I berated myself a second time for that thought. If Eric reverted to his vampire state he'd zonk out until the robust summer sun got around to setting.

In the fridge I found a pitcher of sweet tea and one of water that had been run through the Brita filter Amelia had installed on the kitchen sink. I stepped out onto the screened in back porch. "Tea or water?"

Eric shrugged indifference. He, at least, realized that he wouldn't be downing any blood. "Whatever you're having."

I went back to the kitchen and sliced a lemon for tea. I was very careful to cut the slices to a nice, uniform thickness. Stalling all the way. When I had two glasses of tea poured and garnished, there was nothing to do but go back outside.

"Should we talk in the house?" I thought of Bill's burnt face and of the bolt-hole in my closet.

"No, I'd rather talk under the sky." Some of the fear I'd seen (heard?) in his mind crossed his face for just a split second.

"Okay." I managed to stall just a little more by retrieving a chair for him from the porch. For once he let me play the hostess and didn't try to carry it for me.

We sat side by side. The arrangement of chairs was purposeful. I didn't know if I wanted to look at him. As the minutes wore on with no one speaking I felt anxiety mounting in me.

"Spit it out," I said when I couldn't take anymore. "You're making me nervous." Sookie the Sensitive strikes again.

Eric smirked but the expression didn't last long. His long fingers gripped the arms of the chair a little too hard. He was ready to start. "I've known Niall a long time," he said, voice low and deep like he was telling a creation myth.

To say that I hadn't expected this particular opening would be an understatement. "He told me," I said, recalling my first meeting with my great grandfather.

"But he didn't tell you how we met."

"No," I answered, though it hadn't been a question. "He didn't tell me that."

"He saved me from Lochlan and Neave."

I'd been sipping on my tea to have something to do that didn't involve looking at Eric while he spoke. Now I was doing a pretty good imitation of Pam's infamous blood spewing—but with iced tea. And I managed to catch most of it back in the glass. "What! What?"

My stomach lurched with dread at the sound of their names and a memory of pain washed over my body. I shuddered, glad my body's memory was far from perfect.

Eric's face was calm. It was beyond calm. It was impassive. Like a shock victim or a vampire. I had reacted like he'd expected. A large part of me didn't want to hear anymore but another part of me wondered desperately why, if Niall had rescued him, Eric hadn't returned the favor.

"You remember what I told you about my maker?"

I nodded. I remembered Eric's tale of the Roman legionnaire who'd turned him and taken him from his home and family. "Appius Livius Ocella."

Eric nodded. "When I was still a young vampire, maybe fifty years old, Ocella sent me away from him. He said it was time I went out and lived on my own for a while, fended for myself.

"When I returned to him a month later, he had a gift for me. It was a leech he'd preserved in amber before it could digest the blood inside it." I smiled absurdly, thinking of mosquitoes and _Jurassic Park_ but Eric went on, deadly serious. "I didn't understand the gift. I had little desire for blood that had been contained in an insect. Ocella laughed and smashed the amber. He told me to eat the leech. So I did." I risked a glance at Eric. His expression was a very human, very confused, jumble of emotions. "Ocella had caught a fairy."

Uh-oh.

"He'd bound the fairy in iron," Eric continued. "He leeched it. When he began to feed he could not stop himself, as so often happens with fairies, and he drained her."

I held my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"The fairy was Lochlan and Neave's mother."

"Oh, Eric!" I practically wailed.

He took a large swallow of the tea I'd given him. I wondered if he even tasted it. "I had never tasted fairy blood and the gift delighted me. Ocella stayed with me a few days and then he moved on, saying again that I should spend time on my own. The fairies came two days later, just as I was preparing to move on."

I closed my eyes and wondered, selfishly, how much detail he was about to subject me to.

"They could sense their mother's blood in me. And, of course, Appius's scent was on me and had been all over their mother's body. If they'd cared to try, they could have figured out quite easily that it hadn't been I who killed her. But they didn't care to try. Appius had counted on that.

"Three days, they held me," he went on. "They practiced their art on me in payment for their mother. Three days. Then Niall showed up."

"He stopped them," I said feeling a rush of affection and gratitude for my great grandfather.

The corner of Eric's mouth tugged up in a smile, but it wasn't a happy one. "He was old and wise even then. He knew immediately that I hadn't killed the female fairy. He told them that torturing me was vengeance and not justice and that she deserved better."

I understood the implication in his words. Niall hadn't stopped the twins out of concern for Eric but out of moral obligation to the dead fairy. I remembered, then, the casual way that Niall had offered to kill Eric for me at our first meeting and I shivered. It chilled me to know that someone I was related to, who cared for me so much, could be so cold.

I couldn't take it all in. My memories of the fairy twins and the shack—of their teeth and their knives and their fire—were too fresh. I realized I was crying. "How does Emma fit in to all this?" He'd said he needed to speak with her at Merlotte's. Then he'd come to speak with me. I might as well have it all out now.

Eric pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his jeans like he'd expected my tears as well. "Healing has always been one of my gifts," he said. "It made me confident … cocky, knowing that I could recover quickly from wounds that immobilized other, older, vampires." His sad smile had returned. "Lochlan and Neave knew. Somehow. They knew how I thought myself to be very near immortal. They knew how much pain I could endure because of it. So they brought Emma."

"She was there?" I felt sick.

"She was there."


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**Warning: This chapter contains situation involving torture**

**CHAPTER 8**

My sheets were drier and blowing more freely in the wind. When they snapped up high enough, they created a canopy of cotton-softened sunlight for a moment. My brain was having trouble reconciling the lovely weather and the ugly things Eric was telling me. There should be torrents of rain and hurricane winds. Now was an excellent time for a storm metaphor.

"Eric, I need a minute." I looked around for an out and my eyes seized upon his empty glass. "I'll get you more tea."

I was half way out of my seat when he stopped me with a hand on my wrist. His grip was strong but not ungentle. "Take your minute Sookie," he said. "But if you leave now I may never start again."

The flatness of his tone was disconcerting. Whatever he was truly feeling at the time, Eric, as I knew him (even when I knew him brain damaged), had always been very good at feigning emotions to his advantage. He could be sincere. He could sound distraught. He had the most heart-breaking pair of puppy dog eyes ever to trouble a woman's soul. Now his eyes betrayed nothing and that nothing spoke the truth in volumes.

"I don't need the minute," I said bravely. His hand still encircling my wrist, was so large it could nearly form a fist.

"You are religious, Sookie?"

I nodded and cut myself off before I could raise a question about the relevance of _his _question.

"Then you know the story of the first man and woman."

I nodded again. I'd known the book of Genesis since my Sunday School days.

"And the Greek myth of Prometheus?" Eric prodded.

"A Titan takes pity on humans because they were not given teeth, or fur, or claws. He steals fire from the gods for them and then gets his liver pecked out by vultures as punishment," I said in summary. I read a lot.

"And the one about the woman who is a given a box and when she opens it all manner of terrors come out."

"And the only thing left in the box is hope," I finished. "Pandora."

"And the physical sciences?" Eric asked. "You know of the phenomenon of black holes? Pockets of matter so dense that even light can be trapped in the gravitational pull?"

"Yes, Eric," I said, my hackles rising just a little. "I did go to high school. Is there going to be a quiz later?" I'd probably learned most of what I knew about black holes from watching _Star Trek_ with Jason when we were kids but he didn't need to know that.

"No."

I wasn't sure if he was kidding. "Where are you going with this?"

"Going?" I made a mental note to get Eric a Slang of the Day Calendar. "I am simply trying to establish points of reference. Emma Asli is the first woman and the fire and the hope. But, more importantly, she is a black hole."

Eric stared at me like he was trying to glamour me into understanding. But glamours had never worked on me when he was a vampire so they sure as shootin' weren't going to work now. "I don't think the 'points of reference thing' worked very well."

"Myths were ways for primitive humans to assimilate and explain real occurrences." He tried. "Those myths, among others, were created to explain her. Well, _them_."

"But they're myths!" I protested all the while apologizing to God and remembering why I never talked religion. Eric continued to look at me like he was waiting for me to catch up. Then I did. "Like vampires," I said.

Eric had the gall to look proud of me for figuring it out.

I had always suspected that the extent of the supernatural world was much greater than I knew—that I had only seen, as Pam would say, the peak of the glacier. I could take this in stride. I could. So Eve herself served beer at Merlotte's on Friday nights and had been involved in Eric's torture. Excellent.

"I think I'll take that minute now." I closed my eyes and let one hand drop to the grass, giving myself a little tie to solid ground. Yep, it was still there all right. When my minute was over I opened my eyes and said, "Okay, you're up. Why does she, whatever the heck she is, exist?" If I sounded less than enthusiastic it was just that I was feeling a little overloaded and a little like I'd taken a step off the deep end of reality.

"She was the first human woman and she will be the last. There is a word for what she is, an archaic dialect of Sanskrit. It roughly means 'density.' You friend is the mother of all mankind and contains every potential aspect of womanhood. She is the archetype. She is—"

"Dense."

"Yes," He said. "Like the black hole I mentioned, she affects any of her descendents that get too close. Especially ones that differ greatly from the norms of humanity."

That would be the supes.

Eric gave me another minute that I hadn't asked for before saying gently, "We've strayed from the topic at hand."

"I was hoping you wouldn't notice."

He gave me a quick smile but the time for joking was long past. "Emma Asli is very human," He said, unconsciously echoing his child. "And she dies like any human woman. Each time she is born again, she exhibits different human traits, different personalities." I had a feeling I knew what the topic of conversation had been during Eric's two nights with Emma since he seemed well versed in the details of her existence. "When I was at the hands of Lochlan and Neave, Emma Asli was called 'Jeyne' and she was quite mad."

"Mad." He didn't mean angry.

He nodded. "Insanity is part of the human condition."

"What happened?" The sun had dipped a few degrees lower. I thought maybe an hour had passed.

"I had been … with the fairies for several hours, and, though I was in great pain, I suppose I was not breaking like they wanted. My wounds healed quickly even though they bound me with silver shackles. The fairies drew a great quantity of my blood and drank some before me. Then they went. Dawn was approaching, I could sense it, and when the door to the room I was kept in opened I thought they'd returned to take me out into the daylight and have done with me." Eric's speech patterns had gotten different, older maybe, as he recounted the memory. "But I was wrong."

I thought if I reached out and touched him right then I might see his memory of what had come through the door, that it might be strong enough to escape even his mind. But I already knew. "Jeyne looked just as Emma does but she was filthy and reeking and dressed in rags. She danced across the room, right through the blood and ashes and offered me her hand. She said she was a powerful queen and if I gave her a kiss and told her a story, she'd command that I be released from my bonds.

"I knew she wasn't in her right mind, of course. But I took her hand anyway. Lochlan and Neave had taken me to a mean little hut far from any settlements but I'd thought maybe she'd wandered out there in her insanity and I wanted her blood to help me heal. When I bit her I couldn't understand what happened to me. I only knew that suddenly I was dying."

"Then they came back." My voice sounded too loud in the little room that smelled of blood and pain. The door to the room was ajar and in the gray pre-dawn light I could make out the scattered ashes of a fire and the shapes of cruel instruments on the walls.

A shadow fell across the light in the doorway and then a hand with long, sickle-like fingernails curled around the door and pushed it open. I screamed, a long wail of despair. "Sookie, let go," said a voice pitched low to creep in under my scream.

I turned to the source and found Eric rendered almost unrecognizable by blood. My breath caught in my throat and I couldn't look away. I was grateful for the blood, in a way, it obscured the wounds underneath. What I could see was bad enough. He had no fingernails and no ears. There was a pile of something damp and dark near his head and I knew with terrible certainty that they had begun peeling off his skin. I was definitely going to be sick. His cracked and bleeding lips parted. "Sookie, let go."

My eyes flew open and I sprang from my chair to lose my lunch into a flowerbed. As a second wave of nausea hit me, I brought up breakfast too, I felt my hair lifted away from my face and out of the line of fire. Eric was careful not to touch my skin. He silently held my hair back while I spent several painful seconds dry heaving and wetly coughing up bile. It might have been touching if not for the awful taste in my mouth and the vomit on my lips.

Eric gave me his handkerchief again so I could wipe my mouth. I took it and walked back to the chaise on shaky legs. It was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to bolt inside and brush my teeth. I wanted to stand under hot water until my skin got so waterlogged it sloughed right off. I wanted to rescind his invitation to my life so I'd never have to see him again and then maybe one day I could forget the image of him, bleeding and broken, that felt as if it had been seared into my brain.

But the cowardice to do those things wasn't in me. I wouldn't let it be in me. I had survived Lochlan and Neave. Surely I could survive knowing what they'd done to him. "Finish it," I said wearily. He'd moved his chair farther away from mine. That stung, but I could see the half-moon circles of blood on his hand where I'd gripped him and dug in without realizing it. It would not be a good thing if I touched him again while he was remembering.

I almost expected him to refuse. I _wanted_ him to refuse. But he went on. He's always believed that I'm stronger than I really am. "They brought me to the point of death many times and then fed me my own blood that they had drawn before Jeyne changed me. When I healed enough they began again."

"She stayed." _She would have to be close, _I thought, _to keep him human. _

"Yes. I heard them tell her that I had hurt her brother. She sat in the corner and hummed. Sometimes she laughed and came over to kiss my cheek."

I felt sick all over again.

"Then Niall came and freed me."

I had already known it had happened and still I sighed with relief. _Please God, let it be over now. _

"He killed Jeyne."

"But she was insane!" I protested, unable to stop myself.

Anger flashed in Eric's eyes, the first emotion I had seen in a long time. "She was dangerous."

I nodded and didn't voice the fact that I was upset more that my great grandfather hadn't killed Lochlan and Neave than that he had killed the girl who Emma used to be.

I hated myself more than I ever have for what I was about to ask but I knew it was the reason he had come here. "So you couldn't come for me because …."

"Because Lochlan and Neave traveled through the realms of the fae."

Again, an answer I wasn't expecting. I thought I remembered Bill saying that this had been a good thing, that it made it possible for he and Niall to track them.

"Faerie is heavily warded against those not of the blood. Lochlan and Neave could take you because of your heritage. One who is not of the blood can only enter in the company of a fairy and only then if he harbors no intentions but for aiding one who _is_ of the blood." Pain clouded Eric's face then, with anger hard on its heels. "Bill's only thought was of saving you," he said. "So Niall could take him."

"But you wanted to save me too." I'm proud to say there wasn't even a hint of a question in my voice.

"Yes," Eric said emphatically. "But if Lochlan and Neave had been willing to give you up, Bill would have taken you away without a second thought." He actually hung his head. "I could not have done that. I wanted vengeance and because of that I could not enter Faerie."

I was crouched by his side and taking his hand again before I had time to think about why I shouldn't. "Eric," I said so softly that he must have had to strain to hear with human ears. I had to remind myself that the flood of anger that my mind was drowning in was not mine. This was no easy task. "Eric, I wanted them dead too. More than I've ever wanted anything, I think. How can I be angry with you for wanting that too? What they did to us …." I shuddered and clung to his hand a little more desperately than my pride liked. It was certainly not the most compassionate thing I had ever said. In fact, it was an outright confession of my own darkness. But I thought it was what he needed to hear.

"But I couldn't save you!" He said savagely and I thought he might yank his hand away from me. "Because I couldn't control myself, I couldn't save you. Because I wanted to kill them, I couldn't save you."

"But I was saved," I reminded him. "And Niall and Bill killed them."

"Only once." Eric's jaw clenched. "I wanted to kill them a thousand times over."

His hands were locked around the arms of the chair so that white bone showed through the skin. On instinct I gripped his jaw with my right hand forcing him to look at me as he'd done so many times during our lovemaking. "Eric, I understand" I said, afraid my words might be powerless against the anger in those eyes. "I forgive you."

He didn't move. I raised myself up so that we were eye level. "I forgive you," I said again and kissed him. For the first time in my life, Eric did not kiss me back. His hands remained wrapped around the chair arms and he stared through me resolutely. I felt hysteria start to rise up in me and anger with it. I would not lose him now because he was too stubborn to forgive himself. "I forgive you," I nearly shouted and kissed him again. It was like kissing sun-warmed limestone.

Despair made my head heavy and I lowered myself haphazardly so that one leg rested across his and I let my forehead fall against his cheek. It occurred to me that though I was forgiving him I was a little annoyed that he'd thought me so hard-hearted that I'd hold his inability to enter Faerie against him. "Eric please," I said because I didn't know what else to say. "Soon I'm going to be angry with you all over again."

_Then, miracle of miracles, something broke and Eric laughed. He laughed longer and harder than I thought was possible for human lungs. His mirth washed over me like absolution and I was laughing with him. It took us a long time to notice when the laugh became a kiss and a long time after that to notice anything else at all._


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**Note: **This part rated M

**CHAPTER 9**

It's one of life's great tragedies that you almost never recognize the best moments given to you until after they've passed. I'm sure someone's said something to that effect famously and eloquently. It's probably on bumper stickers and coffee mugs.

Thankfully, I was not having that kind of moment. I was having the other kind, one of those extra rare ones that you know, even as it's happening, is going to be included in your life's highlight reel. And I so deserved it.

My hands started at the back of his neck, discovering the pocket of heat that rested at the nape under all that golden hair. His skin wasn't hot like Quinn's, which had felt volatile and almost feverish. It was warm though, so much warmer than it had ever been, reminding me at all the points where we touched that, for a brief moment, he was alive.

In the process of shouting my forgiveness at him I'd ended up with one leg on either side of his lap, outer thighs pressed against the arms of the chair. The result was that I had to kind of lean over to kiss him like a kid leaning over a new toy. It pleased me to no end that as Eric and I kissed like kissing was about to be outlawed, it was he, the centuries old Don Juan, who occasionally forgot to breathe.

"This is about to turn into CPR," I said once when Eric broke contact to draw in a much-needed breath. I laughed against his neck, which was working with the effort of oxygen exchange. "Your nose works too, you know."

It probably should have ruined the moment, my teasing him about his newly acquired human necessities. But this was Eric, and our trysts in the past had been nothing if not playful. I was still busy laughing when he found the sweet spot below my ear with his lips and gave me my own lesson in gasping.

When Eric's hands pressed on the backs of my legs, pulling me toward him, I had a brief moment of practicality in which I wondered about the structural integrity of this particular lawn chair. How much closer could I get to him until our balance shifted and the chair toppled backwards? Not getting closer wasn't really an option in my book, but I was pretty sure that a head wound would actually ruin the moment some. It was at about that same time that I decided I didn't want to be in the chair anymore anyway.

I placed one foot and then the other on the ground, backing away slowly as I continued to kiss Eric. And wasn't I just pleased as punch when he sat forward to follow my lips like he didn't even realize we were on the move?

Standing, the angle of our kiss changed since Eric's got several inches on me. I kept inching my feet back and he kept following. My back encountered the soft cling of a hanging sheet. It got between us briefly and while Eric and I couldn't see each other, hands wandered, maintaining the contact that had been so rudely interrupted.

I didn't really have a destination in mind as I slowly back-pedaled across my yard. My bed maybe? But wasn't it far away and weren't there doors in the way?

When Eric left my lips again to go exploring my neck and collarbone I closed my eyes and touched his mind, feeling almost shy. His kisses fell on me like sunspots, each one flaring behind my eyelids, brighter than the sun. When I opened my eyes again, I realized I'd lost both shirt and bra somewhere along the way. When had that happened, the sheet? In any case, Eric had stopped in his ministrations to admire the view. My breasts, lined from the sun, were moving with my constantly increasing need for air. Eric seemed to like that.

With a wicked grin he slid his hands under my bottom and lifted me up. Obediently, I wrapped my legs around his waist, ready to put every romance novel cover I'd ever seen to shame.

Eric kissed me good and long. "Human necks start to ache," he complained lifting me higher and giving me another devilish grin before leaning the much shorter distance to lavish the attention on my breasts that he'd given my lips.

My denim skirt was bunched up around my hips and the part of me that wanted him most was stifled below too many layers of fabric. "Eric," I said, because I'd grown much bolder over recent years. "Take me to bed now, please."

To my shock and dismay, Eric froze. "Sookie," he said like my name was the very last thing he wanted to say.

My legs slid to the ground under the heaviness in his voice. "What's wrong? You don't want—?"

Eric laughed once again. I didn't think this joke was nearly as funny. Then, abruptly, he pulled me fiercely against him so that a very sweet part of me ground against his thigh. I gasped. Talk about mixed signals.

When he spoke his voice was little short of a growl. "I want you in every way that a man can want a woman," he said. "I want to be so far inside you that I cannot tell where my flesh ends and yours begins. I want to crawl into you and never come out again."

"Alright," I said in something that did not especially resemble my voice or any voice at all, for that matter.

Eric's eyes closed and his face with them. His jaw was tight as he slowly released his grip on me. He let out a long breath. "When I was alive I fathered six children," he said.

Oh. Right. Human.

My mind raced through several thoughts all at once. Did Amelia keep condoms in the house? What had I almost done? How could I not realize? Isn't a pregnancy just the kind of trick Eric should want to pull on me? Couldn't I just see him, preening and strutting, while I held an infant stamped with his face, and all the other vamps wondered how he'd done it? Did I really, even now, want yet another tie to him? Would any condoms Amelia might have stand a chance against that which I'd once called 'a gracious plenty'?

"Lover, you look like you're trying to unravel Byzantine politics."

"I'm sure I do," I replied, my tone not nearly as light as his. I really, really didn't want to have to drive down to the Grabbit-Kwik. I really just wanted to pretend that he was as infertile as always and that I wouldn't be fighting panic as I peed on a stick a few weeks from now and waited for a little dash or plus sign to change my life.

Then I had my own jaw clenching revelation. My face flushed and I studied the grass and my chipped toe nail polish. "It doesn't matter, Eric," I said apologetically. "Now's, um, not a good time."

He cocked his head to one side and I searched for an adequate euphemisms. I didn't come across anything very promising. "It's my time of the month," I tried. _Lately I've been feeling crampy and bloated and irritable_, I thought but decided to keep that to myself.

"Ah," Eric said and his lips moved as if he were translating something. "Your lunar blood is upon you. Your menstrual period."

Awkward as the situation was, I couldn't help smiling at his own peculiar euphemism.

"Yeah. Sorry." I said at the same time that he said, "Excellent," and started kissing me again.

I pushed him away with some difficulty. He was still very strong and very, very good at kissing. "Eric," I was blushing again, I just knew it. "No. Sorry."

"Why?" Eric's thumb rolled across my cheek like he could smooth my embarrassment away. "For being a reproductively mature female? I like that about you." His other hand gave me a little once over to illustrate which of my womanly parts he liked best. Pretty much all of them.

"No," I said again. Eric wasn't very good with 'no' and a girl had to repeat herself often. "I don't think … I _can't_." I could not believe I was having this argument with him. And while I was half-naked in my own backyard no less.

"Why not?" He really was like a giant two-year-old. "Is not a woman's menstrual period the time when she is the least likely to conceive a child?"

"Well, yes."

"Excellent," he said again and started up with the kissing, working his hands right back behind my legs, which I found, this time, to be a little too close to the source of my anxiety for comfort.

"Eric! Stop." I actually stamped my foot.

"Stop?" He asked and I followed his eyes down to where my hand had crept inside his shirt and was stroking the muscles of his abdomen even now. Lord have mercy. Betrayed by my own body.

My hand drifted higher, caressing the warm skin over his ribs. Eric's body stiffened, jerking a little. Apparently a living Eric was a ticklish Eric. Interesting.

Finding out just how ticklish saved me from explaining myself for a little while. Eric had forgotten about tickling, it seemed, and spent a few short minutes at my mercy. Eventually he managed to get a grip on both my wrists. Breathless and thoroughly disheveled, he looked me in the eye. "Do you really want to stop?"

I probably looked as thoroughly wild as he did. "What do you think?" I asked a little sullenly.

"So what's the problem, my lover?"

I shrugged uncomfortably, an awkward gesture when your hands are pinned near someone else's chest. "I'm bleeding, Eric. It's kind of … I don't know."

Eric looked like he was trying really hard not to laugh. "When you were Bill's companion, did you never make love when your blood was upon you?"

"Yes," I admitted, pausing to contain my surprise that'd he'd mention Bill in that particular capacity. I didn't have a whole lot of relationship experience but even I knew Eric was a little strange in this regard. Then again, he, being Eric, was probably very secure in his belief that I was "his," making Bill's role in my life inconsequential. "Sometimes we did. But he was a vampire …."

"I have been a vampire for longer than Bill Compton's family line existed," he reminded me.

"But you're not now," I argued. I knew there wasn't a lot of sense to my position but I couldn't shake the sense of unease. "There's just something … kind of disgusting about it."

"Sookie, lover, you think that only because you have been raised to think it." Eric said, resting a broad palm over the womb that was currently causing me such distress. "There is nothing disgusting about your body's natural processes."

"Tell me that the next time I have garlic breath," I muttered. Oh, the blush was out in full force.

He chuckled and his hand slid around to press against the small of my back, working out a knot of tension I hadn't realized was there. "Your body is mourning the loss of a potential child. It is powerful and sad but never disgusting."

He continued to massage my lower back and when he leaned in to kiss me I didn't stop him this time. I thought he'd pick me up and carry me to my bed as he'd done once before. When he didn't, and I suggested it, he said, "I'd rather see you in the sunlight."

I've never thought of myself as an exhibitionist but I couldn't find it in me to object. The sheets drifted on the wind around us, shielding us from eyes that weren't there, as we divested one another of our remaining clothing.

As Eric was pulling his shirt over his head (a task I couldn't accomplish due to his sometimes frustrating height) I took a moment to admire the view. Having spent more than a millennium in the dark, and being of Viking descent, Eric was not much further off white than he'd ever been. I almost giggled to myself, wondering if he'd end up with a sunburn on that glorious butt of his.

Then I got back to the serious business of staring at every inch of him. There seemed to be more contours to him now that some color had come into his skin. There were shadows between the muscles of his arms and chest. His nipples were down right rosy.

"Are you finished?" he asked. He'd caught on to my leering but I didn't mind one bit.

"Nearly," I replied tartly, then, "you're beautiful."

"You've told me this before, lover," he said, stepping close enough that my breasts brushed against soft down of his chest. I shivered in the heat.

"It's what I was thinking," I answered honestly.

He bent to kiss me. "If I told you that you were beautiful every time I thought it, I think you would grow tired of hearing."

"Try me."

"You're beautiful, my Sookie," He said in a voice so low I felt it more than heard. He kissed my mouth, my nose, my eyelids. "You're beautiful." His hand slid down between us, over my breasts and across my stomach. He paused to caress the curve of my hip and a contented rumble started in that big, broad chest of his.

"You're beautiful," He said and looked in my eyes to be sure I was okay as his hand glided down between my legs. My head tipped back when his fingers rolled over that sensitive bud and I couldn't keep my eyes on his. He watched me, though, I knew, as his mind very deliberately showed me as I looked to him, flushed, throat bared, lips parted and panting, so very close to the edge. "Beautiful."

When his hands resumed their place behind my thighs, I sighed with frustration but let him lift me once again. He kissed me relentlessly, holding my hips but not touching me. I wondered if I could manage to topple him over like I'd feared toppling the chair.

Then, when I almost thought he'd changed his mind about fertility and feminine cycles, he shifted my hips just little and was inside me. My moan of satisfaction poured into his mouth, still pressed against mine. He must have reached a hand out to grab one of the sheets because I heard clothespins snap and then he was lowering us, still joined, to the sheet in the grass.

Bits of grass still poked at my back through the sheet, and my yard had the odd rock or three, but I barely noticed. My ankles were locked across Eric's back, he was above me and in me and not moving at all. He looked at my face as I rolled my hips against him and remained expressionless though I'm sure he wanted to smirk at my obvious frustration. "What's wrong lover?" He said like we were talking over tea.

"Nothing at all." I sounded decidedly less convincing but two could play at this game. I looked up at him, staring my own refusal to move even though my every instinct said to thrust up against him. He stared back. I gave him a little squeeze with my internal muscles and his eyebrows did a little dance. So I did it again.

His expression plainly said that this was unfair. So of course, I kept at it, keeping my hips still but contracting around him rhythmically. But then I gave a little involuntary gasp and we realized together that we were done playing. Finally, Eric moved, pulling almost out of me before thrusting back deeply. He did it again, helping me along the rise I'd already begun to climb.

Somewhere under the haze of electric pleasure I noticed that there was less control to his movements than usual. I smiled and found his lips, his warm, living, human lips. He pulled one of my legs up to drape over his shoulder. My eyes widened at the new angle of pressure and my hips bucked erratically. I was looking into his eyes and watching myself come apart in his mind when I opened my mouth and breathed out light.

Eric's own moment followed soon after. He drew my name out long and low like it had gotten caught between his teeth. When his weight collapsed upon me, I accepted it gladly, holding him to me so he'd know I wanted him to stay in me a little longer. He breathed the guttural words of his long-dead language against my throat. I'd only heard him speak that ancient tongue in anger or at the height of ecstasy. It had always sounded fierce and harsh. But his words against my neck were fluid murmurs landing on my skin with no more force than a whisper.

Eventually he moved away from me, turning onto his side and pulling me against him so my back pressed against his chest. One of his hands idly traced patterns across my stomach. If I knew Eric, that hand would go along innocently enough until it found something warm and wet. But in a few minutes time, I stood corrected. The hand stopped moving and Eric's breath, something I'd never thought to feel against my neck, got slower and slower.

"Eric," I said. "Amelia will come home eventually." I guessed it was about three in the afternoon now, though if the sun hadn't been in the sky it could just as easily have been midnight.

Eric's only response was to squirm around a bit and then pull the sheet to drape rather ineffectually across us.

"Eric!" I sighed and laughed. I turned my neck so I could look at him.

"I want to sleep with you." He said thickly, eyes not opening.

"What do you think we just did?"

He peered at me through one eye. "Why would I say sleep if I meant sex? I have never slept beside you," he said matter-of-factly. "Doing so would please me."

"You have so," I protested, thinking of the first night I'd let him into my bed and fallen asleep holding his hand.

"No. There is nothing in a vampire's existence like human sleep."

"What about when you sleep during the day?"

Eric nuzzled my neck. "No, lover, that is much closer to death than to sleep."

I shivered, though the sun and his body were warm. I believed him, you don't try to wake two different vampires from their day time trances to escape dire circumstances without learning just how close to dead they really are.

"An hour," I said and Eric buried his face in my neck where I could feel him smile.

Some time later (I'd said an hour, but who knows how trustworthy my internal clock is) I shook myself out of the most pleasant of dozes. 'We should go inside now, Eric."

Eric groaned slightly but raised himself up and nodded. "I will turn soon."

"You can tell?"

"It feels a little like the dawn," he said. "Emma Asli changed me briefly yesterday so I would know when to leave the sunlight."

"Oh." I tried very hard not to be jealous that Emma had spent time with a living Eric before I had. It worked a little.

Eric stretched and I noticed that where we had touched in sleep, our sweat hadn't quite dried. I also noticed that Eric's human scent was much stronger than his vampire scent. "You smell like such a man," I observed.

"Is that a complaint?"

"No," I said, running a finger across his still slick chest. "When you smell like this I just want to fuck you and bite you and rub myself all over you."

"But you've done that already, my lover," Eric said, grinning as he recognized his own words.

"A little," I admitted. He did have a mark or two from my teeth—what can I say—I'd developed a habit. I slid myself over his body one more time for good measure and set my lips against his neck. I bit, not quite lightly, and then sucked at the spot, wondering how long my mark would stay on him. Because role-reversal is almost always fun I said, "Mine." I'd meant to say it with sass, to say, 'how do you like that buddy,' but to my chagrin, the word had come out almost feral and definitely possessive. I realized I meant it. "Mine," I said again, biting at his lower lip.

Eric pulled back and looked at me with a light older than Moses in his eyes. His wicked grin faltered. Leaning back in, watching me, he whispered, "Yours," against my mouth and then claimed my lips.

Naturally our plan to go inside got a little sidetracked but when we came back to ourselves Eric cocked an eyebrow. "Shower?"

I shook my head. I would have to shower soon but I didn't want to wash him off of me just yet. "There's something else we could do," I said lightly and picked up a lock of his thick, blonde hair. "I love your hair, sweetheart."

He looked at me, waiting for the rest.

"But it looks like it was cut with an axe." I showed him the thousand year old split ends.

My yard was once again filled with his laugh. "It was a hunting knife."


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

My next workday was Friday and I was on the lunch shift with Jillian. Lunch shifts were generally easy and boring and pretty crummy on the tips right up until the last hour or so when the dinner crowd started in. Jillian and I spent the slow hours of the afternoon bringing up stock, sanitizing the taps, and waiting on the slow trickle of customers. There was nothing like a slow afternoon to remind a girl just how much work was involved in the upkeep of a bar.

All in all, the afternoon passed more quickly than I was used to lunch shifts passing. I made quick forays into the walk-in fridge (and even quicker ones into the freezer) to verify the dates on meats and salad dressings and other things you really don't want to keep around longer than you should. Then Jillian disappeared into the stockroom for almost an hour. She emerged, white t-shirt dusty, clutching six heavy mugs by the handles with straining fingers.

The mugs, it turned out, were from the original business that had occupied what was now Merlotte's Bar and Grill. The building was older than I'd known. It had been built, according to Sam, as a soda shop sometime in the twenties. The mugs proclaimed, in frosted writing, that they were for "Jimmy's Famous Root Beer Floats." Sam hadn't even known they were in the stock room.

I suggested Sam sell the mugs as collector's items. Old people in Bon Temps love old stuff. Actually, I think old people everywhere love old stuff. But Sam just shrugged and gave a mug each to Jillian and me and took the rest back to his office, shaking his head. He re-emerged a few minutes later, looking like he'd forgotten something. "Sookie, Jillian," he said. "Can you stay an extra hour this afternoon?"

"But Sam it's been dead all day!" Jillian protested. She'd grown a bit of lip since she was no longer the new girl.

"I know," he said. "But this afternoon was the first game of a double-header against Monroe. Home game."

"We'll stay," I said. Baseball season was almost as big as football season in Bon Temps and there was an old rivalry against Monroe. The post-game dinner rush should probably be pretty big, and, if we won the game, the tips would be excellent even with Emma in for the swing shift and Holly and Danielle coming at five.

Jillian was pretty entertaining company. I quickly found out that she could nearly match Diantha for breathless speech as she chattered away non-stop for the better part of half an hour, sucking air in through her little upturned nose and letting it out as a constant stream of words.

I learned several things in those thirty minutes: all the latest happenings on a reality TV show that I'd never heard of, that she was battling stretch marks from the birth of her son, and that Mattel had announced that a vampire Barbie and Ken would be out in stores in time for little girls' summer escapades. I pictured a vampire Ken doll that looked a lot like Eric. I laughed to myself. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Mattel called him up to take a cast of his face. Most guys would probably balk at being the new face of a line of girls' dolls but I could just see Eric posing in Shreveport malls for nighttime promotions of the product and keeping a stock on in the Fangtasia gift shop alongside the vampire of the month calendar. There'd be no living with him after that.

"Oh, Sookie!" Jillian exclaimed, interrupting her own story of changing a flat tire and my thoughts of Viking Barbie. "Me and Emma are going to this bar tonight after she gets off work. It's over near the NLU campus. You should come," she said enthusiastically. "It's really fun. The beer's domestic and the staff's imported." Jillian's face said 'yum.'

"Oh, I don't know," I said skeptically, though I did know that I didn't especially want to go out to bar (after getting off work from a bar) with an underage co-worker. I'd spend too much time wondering who was taking care of her son. I also didn't know yet how I felt, or how I should feel, about Emma.

"Come on!" Jillian encouraged. "It's no fun cruising for guys with Emma and it'd be just the thing to get your mind off of …." Then Jillian caught sight of my face and changed her tune. "Oh, do we _like_ pale, blonde and fangy now?"

"Yes," I said primly. Jillian didn't know yet that I was usually pretty private about my personal life.

Jillian didn't really take the hint and proceeded to tease and to ask me not very well disguised questions about what she clearly thought were common vampire fetishes. She wasn't entirely wrong about a few. She also didn't seem to notice that I'd gone from shouts to shy smiles over Eric practically overnight. I saw in her head that she'd never really felt one way or the other toward him and her reactions sprang from a staunch 'stick up for your girls' mentality.

I was surprised when business started to pick up considerably around two-thirty but then my customers cheerfully reminded me (verbally and mentally) that plenty of spectators swung by Merlotte's for a pre-game drink and took a sandwich, boxed up, to the big event. I was always impressed by the number of people in our small town who didn't have to work on a Friday afternoon and could go to a high school baseball game.

Just after three, we had a genuine rush on as folks trafficked through in a hurry so they could be up at the school by the first pitch. Holly had showed up promptly at three, explaining that Sam had called her in for the pre-game rush. D'Eriq showed up on time as well, Lord bless him, so we didn't have to bus our own tables anymore.

Ten minutes after three, I was quickly filling a bucket with ice from the kitchen to replenish the near-empty ice chest behind the bar. Holly put an order in the window. "Where the heck is Emma?" Holly asked. "Isn't she on swing?" Swing shift started at three and ended whenever the evening rush died down some, usually a little after eleven.

"She came in like fifteen minutes ago," D'Eriq said. He was tackling a huge mound of dishes in the dish tank. "Went to the bathroom."

"You think she's okay?" I asked.

D'Eriq grinned in the way only a seventeen year-old boy can. "Some guy followed her in there."

"What guy?" Okay, now I was a little concerned even if I hadn't decided how I felt about Emma's role in my … Eric's torture.

"Don't worry 'bout it, Sookie, "Antoine hooted. "You know that girl ain't knockin' it in there with no guy and you know she can sure take care of herself." Antoine had been present for Emma's takedown of Kit Dawson which had almost matched Sam's change into a lion in its legendary status. "Probably wasn't no guy anyway. Or he was glowing and looked like an angel. Ain't that right, D?"

D'Eriq paused in his washing of a plate. "Well he was glowy." D'Eriq said like he was talking about funny skies that might mean a tornado. "But not like a vampire or like that angel-man I seen. He was like—his skin was too thin and he was kinda bright inside."

Antoine hooted again but then saw the concern on my face. "Remember I told you, Sookie," he said. "D'Eriq's always seein' things. Don't mean nothin'."

I remembered. I remembered when D'Eriq had seen Niall and thought he was an angel. D'Eriq had been wrong, of course, but the other patrons in Merlotte's had barely noticed my great-grandfather.

I quick-stepped to the ladies' room, leaving the ice bucket half-full. "Emma!" I called, knocking and pushing the outer door to the bathroom at the same time.

"Sorry Sookie," Emma said. She was washing her hands. "I'll be out in just a second. I wasn't feeling so hot."

There was no one else in the small bathroom unless she (or he) was in the stall with her feet pulled up so I couldn't see them. But I had that feeling you get when you walk into a room and know right away that you've interrupted a conversation about you. And I had another odd feeling too. It was like sitting down on a warm sofa cushion and finding someone's half-drunk glass off tea on a coaster on the end table and getting a whiff of his cologne on the air. Like someone had just been there but I'd missed him.

"You feeling any better?" I asked. She looked perfectly healthy to me, all rosewood skin and track-star limbs.

"Yeah. I'm fine," She said, though her complexion was more convincing than her voice. "How 'bout you? You talk to, ugh, Eric?"

"We talked," I said as evenly as possible since I didn't know what said talk meant for Emma.

"Good," she said in a similarly flat voice. "I'll be right out."

The next three hours of my extended shift were a blur as the dinner crowd became the post-game (victorious!) dinner crowd. We ran low on sweet tea since we saw a lot more families than usually come in and Sam sent D'Eriq out to the Piggly Wiggly for more ketchup when a bunch of the bottles seemed to run dry at once.

About half an hour before I was set to go home, a man, neat, gray, and clearly not from Bon Temps, took up residence at one of my tables. "Just some water with lemon, please, Sookie," he said politely, in a voice so quiet I had to lean forward to hear, when I gave him my waitress spiel. "And if it's not too much trouble, might Emma wait on me this evening?"

"Sure thing."

I went to get the man his water and told Emma to take his order when she got a chance, I'd pick up her next available two-top. When I brought the water the man thanked me, popped something dark and round into his mouth, and took a sip. Whatever it was, it was too big to be a pill. Maybe it was a piece of candy. It was definitely not my business. I told him Emma would be right with him and made the final rounds of my tables before turning them over to be split between Holly and Danielle.

"Hey, I don't think I'm up for going out tonight," Emma said, as she, Holly and I excused ourselves past one another to the taps while Sam mixed drinks for our orders. I had a few refills to run before I was cut for the evening.

"But Sookie's not coming either!" Jillian protested with dismay from the other side of the bar. "My sister's watching Colin and everything!"

"Oh, you really should go, Sookie," Emma said since I was conveniently there to play scapegoat.

Jillian shook her head, looking less upset. "We like Eric now," she said in a very loud whisper as she took off with her tray of drinks, grinning all the way. She, of course, had no idea about how absurdly complicated 'liking Eric' was now that he was good and dead again (what with vampire politics and the blood bond and all its warm and fuzzy problems) so she could just be happy for me. Someone should.

"Oh do we!" Emma said cheekily as if I hadn't (sort of) told her as much in the bathroom. "That's good," she said, but sounded less convinced now that Jillian was out of earshot. Sam was not out of earshot and I saw him very pointedly turn to his drinks and away from our conversation. "Since you're not coming out tonight we should hang out some other time, Sookie. We could even stay in, chat about your man, you know, girl talk." Her tone was too serious for what she was claiming to offer. Somehow I didn't think the invitation had much to do with my refusal to go to the bar or with girl talk.

"Sure," I said and Emma went off to wait on the guy who'd requested her.

When I finally got out of the bar, about twenty minutes later than promised, I found D'Eriq smoking a cigarette I knew he was too young to smoke in the employee parking lot. "Did you see him, Sookie?" the busboy asked excitedly, waiving the cigarette enough that I thought it might go out.

"See who?" The guy with the whispery voice?

"The glowy guy in the bathroom." D'Eriq clarified while his mind inquired whom else I could think he was talking about. Well, what it actually said was '_Duh_.'

"Emma was the only person in there," I said gently because D'Eriq was so excited.

"Really?" The boy's face fell and he took a drag on the cigarette. "I thought _you'd _see him."

I didn't know if D'Eriq's tendency to see things other people didn't was a true 'gift' of some kind or just the imaginings of a teenaged mind but I understood wanting someone else to see the world the way you did. I'd spent my whole life looking for someone who knew the things I did about other people and never found one until I met Barry in Dallas. "What did he look like, D'Eriq?"

D'Eriq's face got serious as he considered a question delivered by an adult. "He was like, maybe about your age," he said. "And he kind of looked like Emma. Except he was glowing, of course. I figured maybe they were related, that's why I wasn't worried about her. I only said that thing about a guy following her in because I already knew Antoine would get on my case." When he said 'said that thing' I assumed he was talking about the suggestive way he'd waggled his eyebrows.

"I'll keep an eye out for him," I promised.

D'Eriq shrugged. "Don't bother. He came out right when you opened the door. If you didn't see him, you're not gonna." D'Eriq sounded pretty certain on this point.

I gave the suddenly glum busboy a smile. "Okay, well let me know if you see him again." I was just glad that D'Eriq seemed less inhibited about this maybe interaction with the supernatural world than I had been at his age. In his position, at seventeen. I wouldn't have made a peep.

###

Amelia had dinner on the table when I got home. She made a few jokes about what a good housewife she was and then we got down to eating. I complimented Amelia on the roast and vegetables. She thanked me and then announced, loudly, but kind of defensively, "So, I snooped," like admitting she'd invaded my privacy cleared her of guilt.

I wondered what she could possibly be referring to but her mind supplied that answer quickly enough. She'd borrowed one of my books a few days ago and finished it while the roast was cooking. The sequel to it just happened to be the book I was currently reading and had left in the living room.

She held up my book, a romance poorly masquerading as a mystery novel, and stuck her thumb in to hold my place as she removed my makeshift bookmark. Her face was almost suspicious. "Where'd you get this?"


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**CHAPTER 11**

The scrap of paper that Amelia held was the one Eric had delivered two days before. I was fairly certain that it must be kind of important since it came to me from the first woman ever to walk the Earth by way of an old-as-aqueducts vampire, so I probably shouldn't lose it. But I didn't have a clue as to what I was supposed to do with it so I figured a book was as safe a place as any to keep it. I'm very careful with my books. Also, I needed a bookmark and the former business envelope worked pretty well in a pinch.

"Oh, Eric brought it over," I said. "It's from Emma. You know that girl who works at Merlotte's?" I probably could have come up with several more accurate and unique descriptions for Emma Asli but the one I went with did the trick well enough.

"The supe sapper," Amelia said brightly.

"Yeah."

"You know what it is?" Amelia cut her meat into small pieces in accordance with American table manners and with her desire to sneak bites in between the words of her explanation.

"No." I already knew that Amelia did but I couldn't get a clear read on what she actually knew.

"'Blood cannot create.'" She said, looking at the scrap of paper like it was an old friend. "It's one of the tenets of physical magic."

"The what of what?"

Amelia answered the second question first. "Physical magic. It's very old magic and very simple. It's strictly a human thing. Most of the magic we do is based on fae magic." It pained Amelia to admit this. "But this is human magic."

"So, if humans have our own magic, why mess with the fairy stuff?" I asked, sipping at my tea like this was perfectly normal dinner table conversation. For Jason and Gran it'd been local gossip. For Amelia and I, it was magical bookmarks. Go figure.

Amelia's cheeks colored a little. "All witches learn physical magic first and it still plays a part in some important Wiccan ceremonies. But it … uh, it lacks finesse," she said. "It's considered to be sort of crude, a very blunt instrument." We were getting to the part she really didn't want to admit. "Plus, technically, anyone should be able to do it without really having any training. That's what the old texts say, anyway."

"You don't believe it," I said. I decided not to mention that I knew what made her uncomfortable about physical magic. Witches didn't like it because it made magic less … elite.

Amelia shrugged. "It's simple, like I said, but it's not _easy_. It's really general, hard to direct, really hard to control."

I nodded. There was probably more to it than that but magic was a thing I tried not to get overly involved with unless it sought me out. "So these tenets …."

"Principles," she said, in case I needed a synonym. "Physical magic is all based in human bodily fluids—the magic that makes us work. The tenets tell what each bodily fluid can do. It's all based on what the fluid actual does for your body."

"For example …?"

"Saliva can protect. Phlegm can protect. Tears can protect and communicate. Same with sweat. Breast milk can sustain. It binds and protects too," Amelia said, her eyebrows snapping up in excitement. "That was kind of a big question in magical history. Why mother's milk could bind or protect. It wasn't until modern times that science figured it out for us. Mothers pass immunities to their babies through breast milk and a hormone that makes the baby feel close to its mother."

"So what about blood? It's the only negative one." I was glad my friend was enthusiastic about her art but didn't have the time or desire to get into details that were irrelevant (to me anyway).

"That's the easiest way to remember blood, because it does everything else. Blood heals, communicates, binds, protects, and sustains." Amelia grinned and I got a flash from her mind of a slightly younger Octavia in full teaching mode. "One of the questions a new witch is always asked is which is the most powerful of the physical magics. It's kind of a trick question. Everyone says blood because it has so many functions." Amelia smiled again. She'd gotten the question right. "Then the elder which makes the pupil write out 'Blood cannot create' a thousand times."

"Harsh."

"Tradition." Amelia shrugged. "_Creation_ magic is the most powerful magic there is."

"So the most powerful physical magic, uh, fluid would be …?"

"Semen," Amelia answered without the slightest hint of embarrassment. "A mature ovum would do just as well, I guess, but it's much less practical."

"Right." I ground my teeth a little in thought. "I wonder why Emma gave this to me."

Amelia looked just as puzzled. Then she laughed a little. "Maybe it's not really for you. Maybe she wanted to stick it to Eric."

"What do you mean?" I'd filled Amelia in on enough details of my reconciliation with Eric that she wouldn't be whispering curses at him if he showed up at my house, but I hadn't felt the need to share the more intimate (read: ghastly) details of the conversation, which, incidentally included Emma. If I had, Amelia would know that Emma kind of stuck it to Eric just by existing. She didn't really need the help of a business envelope.

Since she didn't know any of the details though, she explained, "Vampires are pretty much all blood magic and blood magic is really strong. But blood cannot create," She practically sang. "That's why they're infertile."

"Oh. I always thought it had more to with them being dead and all." I felt my eyebrows make a jump for my hairline. "But they can make children. Sort of."

Amelia scoffed and I saw that witchy part of her that had contempt for most other beings involved in the supernatural world raise its head and take a look around. "Vampires call themselves 'makers' and new vampires 'children' because it really burns their butts that they can't create. It's almost as bad as the fact that, at its core, their magic is _human_ magic." She was smiling a little savagely. "Their magic _is_ strong. They can sustain a life past the point of death. They can bind it to a new mode of existence. But they do not create anything."

Well wasn't that just a new 500 word essay to add to my file of 'Things that make you go Hmm.'

I must have been staring and silent for longer than I thought because when I looked up, Amelia had finished her supper and was being a little louder than necessary with her silverware to get my attention. "So," she said, making conversation since I hadn't finished my meal yet. "Speaking of the Devil, _have_ you heard from Eric lately?"

I knew Amelia wouldn't have asked if she didn't think the answer was 'yes' so I wasn't surprised at all when she looked a little horrified when my face decidedly said 'no.' "Well he was just here two days ago, right?" Amelia back-pedaled. "And Pam said he wasn't exactly taking care of Fangtasia very well …." Amelia clamped a hand over her mouth as her backpedaling created an express need for more backpedaling. But, of course, I could pick up what she'd stopped herself from saying right out of her head.

"Pam _called _you?" Whatever my roommate and the vampire's relationship had been, I never would have expected Pam to involve Amelia in _my_ relationship with Eric. And I definitely would not expect her to mention to Amelia that Eric had been neglecting his business.

"She wanted me to encourage you to talk to him," Amelia admitted. I learned from her thoughts that Pam had only divulged details about Eric's business because Amelia had refused to intervene. She thought I could take care of my own personal life, thankyouverymuch. That last part did make me feel a little better.

"I guess high-handedness runs in the family," I said, more to myself than to Amelia.

"Anyway," Amelia said when she was pretty certain I wasn't angry with her. "Last time he was here he was, you know, alive for the first time since dinosaurs walked the Earth." I couldn't help laughing a little at the hyperbole, which I thought was probably the point. "He probably had a lot on his mind. Even if he is a vampire. And Eric."

Eric, of course, always had a lot on his mind. Usually plots that were decades long in their clever execution, I'd guess. But I knew what Amelia meant. Eric couldn't be any more accustomed to messy emotional entanglements than I was. Besides it wasn't as if he'd come into my home, ravished me properly, turned quite a big chunk of what I thought about him upside down, and then not contacted me for two days. It wasn't as if we were married. Oh wait, scratch that. He had. And we were. Sort of.

So I guess you could say I was feeling a little conflicted. And I'd like a phone call. But I wasn't going to sit around pouting if I didn't get it. I cleared up the dinner dishes. I took a shower and braided my wet hair so it would dry in loose waves. I Googled new recipes for the meats in my freezer. I chatted some more with Amelia about physical magic. She had some pretty amusing anecdotes about herself as a new witch but none of it made me go, Ah-hah!

Then, when the sun was sufficiently set, I called Fangtasia. I could have called Eric's cell, of course, but I didn't really have any urgent need to speak to him and if he was conducting business it wouldn't be polite to interrupt as if I did. You know your guy is a vampire Sheriff if you think of his cell phone number as something to be saved for life-threatening situations.

I guess I could have read some and gone to bed, playing the stupid, prideful game of phone politics but I was already up to my neck in other people's politics. I didn't need to start my own.

The minion who answered (maybe it was rude to refer to the Fangtasia's fangbanger employees as 'minions' but I was pretty sure it was what they called themselves) was less into the mystical act than most of them. "I'll see if the Master's available," she said when I asked for Eric but at least she said it like 'Master' was something she happened to call him and not the invocation of a minor deity.

Fangtasia trippy-trance hold music played for a few minutes. "I am speaking with Victor Madden just now, my lover." Eric's voice said when the music cut out. It took me a moment to process his words through a lovely fog of easy contentment. Oh yeah, the blood bond was going strong. "You remember Victor?"

I knew the area Sheriffs had a kind of phone tree (like PTA moms) and checked in with one another nightly. But I got the impression that the Sheriff of New Orleans was present in the flesh and not holding on line two. Uh-oh.

"Of course I remember Victor," I said brightly, aware that the other vampire could probably hear every word I said. Of course I remembered the vamp that had orchestrated the murder of Sophie-Anne Le Clerq and every Louisiana Sheriff save Eric. Eric claimed that things had settled well enough for him in the new regime, but the idea of my Viking sitting in a room with a man who'd murdered all of Eric's peers with a smile on his face, made me uneasy.

"We've been discussing the open position of bartender at Fangtasia," Eric said mildly, answering the burning question of why on God's green Earth had Victor come up from New Orleans. He was there to talk about Felicia. "Victor would like a word with you, my lover," Eric said and I thought I could hear a strained note in his voice. I was suddenly rather sorry I'd called.

"Miss Stackhouse," Victor's cheerful voice said immediately, as if it had taken no time at all to pass the phone. "It is always a pleasure to speak to you."

"You too, Mr. Madden," I replied, matching him schmooze for schmooze. "What brings you all the way up to our corner of Louisiana?"

"As Eric said, we've been discussing the staffing of Fangtasia. The king considers it to be one of Area Five's most promising enterprises." I could practically hear Victor's charming smile through the phone. "The bartender's position has indeed become vacant—a rather recurring pattern for Fangtasia, I've come to understand." I couldn't tell from his voice if he knew of my involvement with a few too many of those vacancies.

"I understand you are employed in a similar establishment, Miss Stackhouse," Victor continued. "I wonder if you might then be able to persuade your husband that it's in everyone's best interest that he make efforts to reacquire his most recent employee. I'm sure you know how much revenue is lost in the training of new staff members."

It was proof of the fact that I've gotten way too far into Supe politics that I read between the lines without even trying. Victor had made an entire dissertation under that friendly little speech. He'd acknowledged that he was there about Felicia and there in a big representative-of-the-king kind of way. He'd let me know that he knew where I worked as well as where I lived (though these thinly veiled threats were probably directed at Eric as much as they were at me). And, in referring to Eric as my 'husband,' he was recalling Eric's little stunt to which Victor had been the unwitting witness. The fact that Eric and I were pledged by that knife was perhaps the only thing that was keeping me in Bon Temps. Victor's message was clear: Keep Eric in line or you'll be in Nevada before you can say 'Jack Robinson.'

"Yep, Sam loses money on new girls dropping trays and breaking glasses every year," I said when what I really wanted to do was demand what the big deal over Felicia was. Maybe that sounds a little cold, but Eric was a good Sheriff, that's why he'd survived the takeover. He took care of his own. I was sure the search for Felicia was going hot and heavy even if Eric had been a little distracted for the beginning of it. "I'll be sure to tell him it would be better to keep Felicia on."

"My thanks, Miss Stackhouse. I'm sure we will speak again."

"Good-bye," I said politely and kept up my end of the double-talk when Eric returned to the phone. "Victor's right, honey," I said. 'Honey' was what I'd gotten in the habit of calling him when he'd lost his memory. I hoped it would get his attention now. "I don't know what you're thinking. You shouldn't put Fangtasia through the trouble of training a new bartender. It's bad for business."

What I meant was, "I have no idea what's going on which really pisses me off. And I think you might be in danger which also really pisses me off."

"_Maybe you should ask Victor to guest bartend while you renegotiate with Felicia. I'm sure he makes an excellent Bloody Mary," I said sweetly, and hoped Victor was laughing on the other end._


	12. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**CHAPTER 12**

Two mornings later, when I woke up shrieking like a banshee mother at a little league game, it had been Victor who'd staked Eric in the dream hours before dawn. He'd done it with a toothy grin. Like he was delighted to be doing me a favor. The morning before he'd actually bowed.

Victor needn't have bothered. If I wanted Eric staked I'd do it myself. And we were fast approaching that point. I was trying really hard to trust Eric to do what he did best (which was to take care of Eric) but I'd really appreciate a phone call, text message, or smoke signal indicating the Sheriff of Area Five was still among the undead. Emphasis on the 'un'.

What I got (eventually) was Bobby Burnham. There's no love lost between Eric's daytime guy and me. Unless sullen looks and condescension are Bobby's ways of showing deep affection. But I could have hugged Bobby when he showed up at Merlotte's right in the middle of the mid afternoon slump.

When Bobby approached the bar, I didn't mince words. "What's the message?"

Bobby gave me a cool look. No surprises there. "My master said only to tell you that the sentiments conveyed in his phone message have not changed."

"I didn't get a voice mail," I protested.

"The message was left on your home answering machine, I believe," Bobby replied as if knowing too many details about my life made him feel debased.

"My answering machine? But Eric—"

Bobby Burnham cut me off with a warning look. His thoughts told me Eric had given him a very specific task that he was to carry out to the letter.

"Eric should have talked to me in person," I finished, hoping the annoyance in my voice was conducive to whatever new game we were playing. I'd told Eric that my answering machine was on the fritz and he shouldn't trust it if he ever needed to reach me. I remembered because Eric had been amused and exasperated by the news like he was about all the cheap things I owned that I refused to let him replace (unless he found a way to break them). Eric wouldn't have forgotten.

Bobby's thoughts (thinking them had been part of Eric's instructions) told me that someone had probably followed Bobby and that Eric had left me a message on the machine and that I was to disregard it. Eric was safe and would contact me as soon as possible.

_If trouble arises, you are to go to Bill Compton_, Bobby's brain said. I wanted to kick him and ask him to deliver that message to his master. Preferably in a physical rather than mental fashion.

"My master has many pressing matters that require his attention." Bobby definitely ladled on more disdain than was necessary. I hoped whatever audience he was playing to was eating it up because it dug at my pride. "Please inform your boss that'd I'd like a few minutes of his time."

I relayed the message to Sam and wondered if 'Vampire Lackey' was a job that required a college degree. Did Bobby study hard to be as conceited as he was? Had he worked at cultivating distaste for his own species?

The men disappeared into Sam's office for the better part of half an hour. When Bobby finally left, Sam shook his hand and gave him a BLT in a to-go box, on the house. I realized, belatedly, that it probably looked just as suspicious that I hadn't tried to interrupt Sam and Bobby's little meeting. Since whoever it was that was supposedly watching would probably expect Eric's wife/underling/whore (depending on whether they were Victor's Minions/Some Other Vampire's Minions/FotS Minions) to do just that. But as far I was concerned, that was water and I'd already crossed the bridge.

"What was that about?" I asked Sam when Bobby left.

"Eric wants to host a sunset to sunrise Mardi Gras party at Fangtasia. He needs a bartender for the first and last hour," Sam said. "Someone who won't burst into flames." His difficult Shifter's brain said he knew something was up and he hated this cloak-and-dagger stuff.

"So he asked you?"

Sam shrugged. "He figures the crowd'll be rowdy by the end and maybe a Shifter will keep their attention when the vampires turn in for the day."

Sam was worried about me. I wondered if Bobby had really just gone through the Mardi Gras spiel or if he'd recruited Sam into the 'protect Sookie' movement.

Sam didn't say anything more on the subject which made me think he had been let into the loop at least a little. Sam's never shy about telling me when he thinks I'm in hot water.

Even though it was still daylight when Emma came in to relieve me, Sam watched me walk out to my car and gave a satisfied nod only when I'd locked myself in. When we changed over, Emma repeated her offer to hang out and 'chat.' I told her I wasn't up for it.

I spent the ride home telling myself that I wouldn't listen to the message from Eric on my machine and knowing that I'd check it within five minutes of walking in the door.

I held out for seven.

Sure enough, the message indicator light wasn't blinking, but when I hit the little blue button, the recorded voice told me that I had three new messages. The first was from Bailey's Blacktop and Gravel inquiring as to whether I'd like gravel poured on my driveway again this year. I spent the duration of that message reminding myself that Eric had said to disregard his message on my machine.

The next message was indeed Eric's. My Viking's voice rang out coldly from the tiny speaker. "Sookie. As you are well aware, I have spent far too much valuable time attempting to assuage your fears and concerns." My trivial fears and concerns, his tone clearly indicated. Which, as of yet, he'd done zilch to 'assuage' anyway. "It has come to my attention that I have allowed the bond between us to unbalance the natural order of things. Know that in the future our relations will proceed in a fashion that befits a vampire and his human paramour. Outside of those relations, my affairs are none of yours. But don't fret, I will contact you when I have ample time for leisure."

I spent the duration of the third message reminding myself that Eric had said to disregard his message. It wasn't the easiest of tasks. Eric had very skillfully, in that message, preyed on pretty much all of my misgivings concerning our undefined (and possibly indefinable) relationship. He'd basically said that his 'feelings' toward me were a result of the blood bond and he was only using me for sex. Ouch.

The fact that the message was a fake and not actually intended to hurt me helped some but not as much as it probably should have.

I tried to distract myself with a TV movie on TNT. The curse words and racy parts had all been voiced over or skipped altogether which made the whole thing pretty absurd. It should have been good for a laugh, at least, but I've always been bad at laughing at movies when I'm watching them alone.

Halfway through the movie I got a call from Amelia saying she was going to dinner with some co-workers and wouldn't be home until late. Feeling unaccountably lonely for someone who was pretty used to, and usually liked, being alone, I decided to make myself a nice dinner anyway. Besides, I'd thoroughly lost interest in the movie.

The homey smells of cooking food and summer air had me feeling almost okay far faster than the TV movie had. Food smells in the kitchen always made me think of Gran. But not in a sad way. And my kitchen definitely smelled of food now. But even under the salty, savory scent of baking ham and buttermilk biscuits, I smelled the assailant before I saw him.

One minute I was leaning over the oven to check on the ham and the next, my nose was assaulted by sweat and unwashed clothing. A damp, meaty hand wrapped around my waist, pulling me back against a broad chest while another hand wrapped around my throat. Instinctively, I drew in a great, big lungful of sour man-smelling air. I caught a whiff of dirt and wet cement, like my attacker was a construction worker by day and a kidnapper by night.

Some part of me that's grown practical in the face of unexpected violence kept me from screaming. There was no one around to hear and I'd need as much oxygen as I could get if the construction-kidnapper had strangling on his mind. His mind!

Maybe I was more panicked than I thought because it took me longer than it should have to process his thoughts in my head. I'd been expecting anger and violence. Instead my assailant thought, _I don't want to hurt you, lady._ He thought it over and over.

A cold fear twisted its way into my intestines as I realized the hand at my throat was uncomfortably tight but not getting any tighter. The nerve endings along my back where I was pressed against the man screamed a dentist drill scream of should-be pain as I realized that maybe this wasn't a vampire backed kidnapping. Maybe this was just some depraved man who had decided to take advantage of a woman alone in the middle of nowhere Louisiana. _I don't want to hurt you, lady_, his mind said, and I thought I heard a note of a more carnal malevolence.

I stomped my feet, hoping to distract him enough that his grip on me would slacken. I was quick, I just needed a split second. But my Reeboks met nothing but steal-toed boots and I stumbled at the contact. I swung my head wildly against the oddly loose grip of his hand, gnashing my teeth, trying to find something soft to bite. _Please don't make me hurt you, lady._ He'll hurt me.

I twisted like an oiled snake, ramming my elbows into his rib cage. One of my hits must have been effective because I pitched forward as the man doubled over, exhaling musty breath against my neck and the words, "The gun." The attacker's hold on me let up just long enough for me to tear myself away. I was following his directions before I had time to think about the source.

Jason's Benelli shotgun was in the hall closet. I'd just pulled it out when the man raced into the hallway behind me. In the brick wall moment during which he realized I was armed and he was not, I had time to swing the gun up into firing position. His mantra changed to, _It's not loaded_, _it's not loaded_, _it's not loaded_. The first time I saw my attacker's face, it looked good and frightened.

"You bet it is," I said, cocking the gun and wondering if I'd really have to shoot another person. Maybe Eric will tell me what he did with Debbie Pelt; I can bury them together. My own little collection of corpses. I was getting a little hysterical.

"Out of my house!" I ordered the man.

He raised his hands. "Don't shoot me, I'll go," he said. His shirt was faded plaid and his jeans were dirty, that saggy, too many days unwashed kind of dirty. His boots had left footprints on my floor.

I kept the gun trained on the man as I stepped backwards down the hallway toward the front door. He would have had to come too close for my liking to get around me in narrow space. When I got to the living room I stepped back into the room and the man continued in a cautious half circle, edging toward the door with his hands raised.

When his back hit the door he reached a hand toward the knob. "Stop," I said. "Who sent you?"

"No one," he lied. A dead lady.

"Who!" I demanded.

"No one," he said back fearfully. "I'm gonna go lady, no one sent me. Call the cops if you want to. Just don't kill me!"

I had gotten out of the habit of taking my troubles to the police. I fired a warning shot over his head. At least, I tried to. The trigger clicked. Then nothing happened.

I willed my eyes not to widen but my heart rate shot right through the roof. Did he see me squeeze the trigger? Had he heard the click? Did he know his little mantra had proved correct?

"Out," I said as steadily as I could manage. "Out now."

"Okay, okay." The man fumbled at the front door, taking a moment to realize it was locked and another to find the dead bolt. Then he pushed backwards through the screen door, panicking a moment when his shirt caught on the handle. I watched him back away in the security light and turn and run into the dark. Wherever his car was, it wasn't close enough for me to see. I'd be getting no license plate number, no make or model.

With the sharp edges of adrenaline still in my system I reconstructed the man in my head. He'd had dark hair and heavy brows that almost met over his lumpy, too large nose. He'd been taller than me by several inches and made of thick, often used muscle. His hands (my insides squirmed at the memory) had been blue-collar rough. He was not a cubicle and coffee break kind of man. He was also not someone who'd seemed especially adept at attacking defenseless women.

I bolted the door behind him and then thought better of it. I kept the doors locked out of habit and that hadn't stopped him the first time. Neither had the wards Amelia had placed around the house. Those had worked pretty well against vampires and the like but, I noted, not against the Fed Ex guy or FBI agents. Things I should have asked about.

Deciding to err on the side of caution, I retrieved my purse and set out into the night with the Benelli still in hand. My senses were on high alert as I crossed the cemetery that separates Stackhouse land from Compton land. It was an hour past dark and only few hours since my warning from Bobby Burnham. Eric was MIA and I'd been attacked in my own house. I figured the situation warranted a visit to the boy next door.

Depsite the Benelli (which I'd reloaded, the rounds had been scattered on the floor of the closet) I'd psyched myself out pretty well by the time I made it to Bill's front door. Since it was unlocked, I pushed the door open without knocking and spilled unceremoniously into Bill's foyer. I half expected to crash into Bill as I barged through the door. He would have heard me coming after all.

Instead I found him on his laptop in the living room. "Bill!" I called, not doing an overly fantastic job at keeping the frightened edge out of my voice.

"Sookie," he replied calmly, clicking and looking at the screen as if he had a file or two to save before he addressed me properly. "You're earlier than I expected." When he did look up, he was at my side faster than I could see him move. "Sookie, you're shaking," he said, hands on my shoulders.

"Someone broke into my house," I said. Bill tried to ease the shotgun from my hands but I hadn't gotten around to telling them that they could relax their grip yet.

"He didn't hurt you, did he?" Bill was absolutely terrifying when he was angry. His face became a frozen mask. It was scarier now than ever since he was still extra pasty from the silver poisoning. "He wasn't supposed to hurt you. I will kill him if he did."

My hand drifted up to my throat, remembering the rough fingers there. "No, he … What? He wasn't supposed to?"

"No. Of course he wasn't." It took Bill a beat to register my emphasis. Bill was still a young enough vampire that his eyes widened and then contracted in rage. "Eric didn't tell you?"

My eyes were probably doing some gymnastics of their own. My brain certainly was. "Tell me what?"

Bill snarled through clenched teeth. "I'm going to stake him myself."


	13. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**CHAPTER 13**

I heard Bill's words and took a step outside my body. There's Sookie Stackhouse, twenty-seven, self-educated, short-tempered, bar maid. See Sookie take bad news like a woman, steady voiced, on her own two feet, wheels turning. See Sookie sit down on her ex-boyfriend's couch. Hard.

Pause.

There was a kind of ringing in my ears like they were full of cotton that just happened to be humming a high b-flat. I was walking out of the living room before I knew what I was doing. Bill tried to talk through the ringing in my ears but it was useless. I waved at him vaguely and moved on to the minimalist kitchen. Why the kitchen? Ah yes, water. I wanted a drink of water.

I filled a glass from the tap and downed it in too few swallows. I knew I was going to get a stomach ache even as I was refilling for round two. If the world would just stop turning for a minute so I could catch my breath, that'd be just fine with me.

Rather than drink the second glass of water, I splashed it in my own face, trying to wake myself up from a world in which nothing was what it seemed. Every word had two edges and they were edges that cut. The people who were supposed to care about me tricked me and betrayed me. They fed from me like parasites and attacked me in dark places.

Right now one of them clasped his cold fingers over mine, gripping a third glass of water, stopping me from … what? Drinking? Smashing it on the floor? "Sookie, there are things you should know," Bill said but his usual calm had been shaken.

"You think?" I blurted loudly in the silent house.

Even after everything we'd been through, Bill still knew me well. So he was already holding me when I started shaking, too angry to cry. Eric had done this. He'd sent that man, that clammy handed, foul-smelling bear of a man into my home to wrap his hands around my throat. I was sure, even now, that in some convoluted way it had been for my own good. I was sure that that was what Bill was going to tell me.

And that's what hurt the worst. That whatever Eric's master plan was, he would entrust it to the vampire who'd betrayed me so grievously that I was only able to marginally forgive him after a suicidal rescue mission and near fatal silver poisoning. But Eric hadn't trusted me. He hadn't trusted me with my own life.

"I hate him," I said, dry-eyed to Bill's silent chest, remembering how his lack of heartbeat had always made him seem infinite. There was no clock to run down. "Why do the people I love always work so damn hard to hurt me?"

Bill's arms seemed to solidify around me like I was being held by a plaster cast of a vampire and not the genuine article. I'd been thinking of Jason and Arlene, of the great grandfather who'd left me, and of the mother who'd never been able to love me enough. I'd been thinking of Bill. I couldn't say which one of us was more shocked and appalled that Eric made the short list. If I had been able to read Bill's thoughts right then, I think they might have been stumbling over triumph and tragedy. "Sookie, there are things I must explain," Bill said dutifully. "We've found Felicia."

"Oh," I said. His voice had been quiet and close to my ear, my reply was similarly soft and softened further by his shirt. "She's … alive?"

Bill's nod touched the top of my head, my hair transmitting the 'yes.' "We got to her before she experienced final death," Bill said, just above a whisper. I tried to step back, to look at him while he spoke, but he didn't seem to register my efforts at all.

"Where was she? What happened?"

Bill made soothing shushing sounds as if I were a distressed child. "A vampire called Alan found her bound behind a garbage receptacle in a town a few miles outside of Shreveport. She was lucky. The dumpster was near the hotel where Alan was planning to spend the day. He found her just before dawn."

"You don't sound convinced that she was all that lucky, Bill."

Bill's cheek brushed the top of my head like he was drawing comfort from me instead of the other way around. "She'd been drained to the point of final death," he said, voice cold enough to stop polar melt. "It may take years for her to recover."

"Years?" I thought about what Amelia had told me about physical magic. Perhaps Felicia had only had a few drops of blood left to sustain her. A few drops between afterlife and oblivion.

Bill nodded again. I had become sufficiently engaged in the conversation that my anger toward Eric was simmering away on the backburner. I tried to pull away from Bill again but his arms were like steel cables holding me fast. "You must stay close, Sookie," he said. "Even now we may be under observation."

"There's someone here?" My eyes scanned the windows I could see. Bill's curtains were drawn across them.

Instead of answering, Bill said, "My database, as it is, is only in its first stages. I have been searching it for trends and inconsistencies. A few weeks ago, I came across a pattern and brought it to Eric's attention."

Bill was the Investigator for Area Five, it was only right that he would bring his findings to his Sheriff. "What pattern?"

"Disappearances," he said. "Of young vampires. I noted some of them when I was making the database. A vampire would report that a young one had lived in the area but hadn't been seen in some time. I was more concerned then with vampires I could locate so the trend went unnoticed." Bill did not sound terribly pleased with himself. "But in updating the database with the disappearances over the past year, it's come to my attention that there is a pattern."

"Vampires disappear often?" They kind of seemed to, in my experience, but with the political upheaval in the kingdom of Louisiana, I just assumed we were kind of a special case.

"Until recent history we spent our lives moving from place to place," Bill reminded me. It wasn't until the development of synthetic blood that vampires could afford to put down roots in a community or there would eventually be torches and pitchforks and angry mobs. "The young ones still … oftentimes they still have reason to move about."

I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. The fact that young vampires had a lot of trouble not killing was something the vampire community still needed to keep from humans. Human babies cried when they were teething and chewed on windowsills, vampire infants drained their victims dry. "So what's the problem?" Other than the dead people. "If they disappear because they've committed crimes. Then why are you all suspicious about it?"

"Because they don't turn up again," Bill replied. "The world has changed, Sookie. It is difficult, even for a vampire, to vanish into anonymity anymore. Another vampire should have seen the young ones again. Weeks later, months maybe. In some other part of the world, under a different name, they should have been seen again. Most of them haven't been."

"So you think something's rotten in the state of Denmark." The remark sounded a little silly, whispered into a vampire's chest as we talked conspiracy theories while embracing. Speaking of embracing, my arms were starting to get pins and needles from being held motionless and parallel to the floor.

"Very. Most of the crimes the vampires committed were in front of human witnesses. And very often those witnesses prevented the vampire from actually going through with the killing."

"So the victim lived," I said, putting it all together. Way to go, Nancy Drew. "But the vampire had to flee because there were witnesses. You think the vamps were set up? And then what, someone grabbed them when everyone assumed they'd jumped ship?"

Bill nodded. "I do. And so does Eric."

I drew a breath. Right, we were talking about Eric too. "What about Felicia? She's not that young." It would be much harder to trick an older vampire into murder. They grew cautious and possessive of their lives in their old age.

"Felicia is our fault. Indirectly," Bill admitted. "Eric wanted more evidence before he brought my suspicions to the King. We'd been working, in the weeks since my recovery, to connect the humans involved. Eric had plans to request your help in that, I believe."

"He and Pam came into Merlotte's one night," I confirmed. Of course that had been the night of Pam's blood spewing so the meeting hadn't gone on as planned. And I guess Eric was a little distracted after that. That part I was responsible for, indirectly.

"Unfortunately, Eric believes that Felicia was in Victor Madden's service. And when Eric didn't bring my investigation straight to the King, Felicia started snooping."

"Eric didn't—" The statement had begun in alarm and didn't have a planned ending.

"Of course not," Bill said with some annoyance, though he'd professed himself ready to stake Eric not fifteen minutes ago. "A vampire would never drain another vampire. Vampires will kill one another in violence or torture but we do not drain the life forces of one another. Besides, the temptation of the blood, though it is not human blood, would be very great." Bill's cool voice went dry like frozen November leaves. "Which is why Victor thinks Eric did do it."

"What? But you just said …."

"The nature of the crime should put a vampire above suspicion. But Felicia was found near the place where Alan was staying. He'd already searched the area. It was as if someone knew he would be close and gave her back." Bill paused, reluctant to say more. "A few vials of her blood turned up yesterday in a drug raid in Shreveport."

I finally managed to put a little space between Bill and myself but kept my voice so low that no one but he would hear it. "So Victor thinks, what, Eric grabbed her to stop her snooping, framed drainers, and then gave her back, so Victor would leave him alone?"

"Precisely. Eric is clever and has always been a somewhat of a rogue. He would not balk at breaking the taboo against draining to suit his purposes or save himself." Angry as I was with Eric, it's never nice to hear nasty things about your significant other. "But Eric did not do this." Bill sounded pretty darn certain. "Because Eric does not involve more people than is necessary," Bill sounded as pragmatic as the vampire of whom he spoke. "He would not wish anyone to know if he planned to abduct a vampire in the king's pay because that person might be made to talk. Only he and I knew about the disappearances and Felicia's investigation. I didn't take her."

"What about him?" Then I realized I already knew that answer. Felicia had vanished when Pam had been unable to wake Eric for days.

When I looked up I could see that Bill knew something of Eric's alibi but there was a question on his face. "We'd had a fight," I said quietly. "A really bad one." _And we're about to have another one_, I thought. "What does this have to do with me? Why did Eric send that man after me?" My voice had risen louder than it should with anger and frustration. I didn't want to be pulled into the horribly convoluted plot Bill had laid out for me. Even as I said it, I started to feel better, relieved, happy even.

"He wanted you to—" Bill began but Eric, filling the kitchen doorway, cut him off.

"He wanted you to learn to stay out of vampire affairs. Tsk, tsk, Bill," Eric scolded; waving a finger like Bill was a naughty child. "You used to be so good at keeping things from her and now here you are, telling her too much. I would have thought silver poisoning would have been enough but you're still in love with her, aren't you?" In the blink of an eye the two vampires were squaring off, fangs out. "It's pathetic."

Bill took a step forward and Eric just laughed. They both knew who would win the fight. "I will speak to my wife since she refuses to know her place," Eric said with distaste. "And then you and I have business to conduct."

With that Eric took me roughly by the arm and half-dragged me toward the stairs. All the while I could feel him pressing on our bond, willing me to be silent. He needn't have bothered, I was spitting mad, far too angry to speak.

He pulled me behind him, up the slick, hard wood stairs to a room I knew all too well. Bill's room had changed somewhat since I'd seen it last, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly how. Eric was in it with me now, which was different for sure. "What's your problem? I just forgave you!" I demanded when the door closed behind us. It didn't matter really since Bill would hear every word.

"I have many and more," Eric replied calmly. "Several of which began with this bond between us. It is far too tight for my liking. That you would think I need your forgiveness …." It was not the first time he'd expressed discomfort with the bond but the other time had been back in Rhodes.

"Too tight?" I screamed at him. "You did it! I could have been bound to Andre, then, at least I'd be free now instead of married to you!"

"But, lover," he leered. "How fortunate you are." He pulled me to him, roughly as his hired man had, and kissed me with more brutality than passion. I slapped him. "That is the only one you get," he said, allowing me a petty victory just so I would know how petty it was.

I took as many steps back from him as the room would allow. I was fuming, drawing angry, ragged breaths when he beckoned to me with a finger and pressed me through the bond. "I have nothing to say to you!" I shouted. I had too many things to say to him, things to be said at decibels high enough to drown out a power drill.

"It is tactless to carry on a spat like this in the vicinity of someone who remains infatuated with you, don't you think?" Eric closed his eyes and anguish flowed through our bond. It was so strong I could taste the heavy bitterness in my mouth. His lips moved silently, "Please, Sookie," I thought they said. As a telepath, I'd never really needed to perfect the art of lip reading but I understood then that he, too, was worried someone was listening in and that that someone wasn't Bill.

I hesitated for a good long while but, as happened so often, the bond between Eric and me ate away at my anger. I took a step toward him. Then another. He closed the distance between us on silent feet and then his mouth was at my ear. "Did he hurt you?" He whispered urgently. His hands swept over me, checking that I was all in one piece.

"Don't. Touch. Me." I struggled to keep my voice at a whisper. There was a plan, right? I remembered that there must be, as the bond calmed me enough that I wasn't seeing red. Eric hadn't really just pulled a Jekyll and Hyde on me had he? If he despised me as much as he seemed to, the bond would tell me, wouldn't it?

Eric wasn't wasting breath or time on apologies though. "Bill told you about Felicia and about Victor's suspicions?"

"Yes."

"Victor does not accept my alibi," Eric said. "He cannot believe that I would be so affected by a mere human. I have told him that your fae blood has influenced the bond in ways I did not expect and I fear my autonomy may be compromised."

"And he'll buy that?"

Eric shrugged. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. But it is more understandable to a vampire that I should have needed ample time to consider such a situation. After all, a threat to my autonomy is a threat to me. But because of the bond, it would pain me greatly to harm you physically. Though I might employ someone else to do so if I remained distant enough from you."

Light bulb. "So you hired that guy to pretend to attack me." Definite emphasis on the pretend, let's hope. "For Victor's benefit?" I thought of the answering machine message. Was Victor watching my house too?

"Partly," Eric said. "But I also needed to speak to you. So I sent Bobby to tell you to go to Bill when trouble arose. Victor will have known that I had a meeting planned with Bill tonight. That it coincided with a charade I planned to inspire the fear appropriate between a vampire and his human lover could only be happenstance. That in your fear you ran to a former lover and to a subject of a king who has offered you protection, a subject whom I also happened to be visiting, and thus forced me to confront you is only an unfortunate coincidence for me." Bobby had thought 'if' trouble arose, not when. Kind of an important difference there since Eric fully intended for it to arise. Though, to be fair, I probably still wouldn't have seen it coming. Who could have?

I leaned my head against his chest. If his groping search for injuries had been any indication, he didn't think anyone was watching, just listening. I can't do this again, I thought. I thought of Quinn and the things he'd said to me the day he and Bill fought before Eric broke them up. I'd cut him loose for his family issues. But his baggage had been a whole lot lighter than a nationful of vampire politics. "Eric," I groaned, probably louder than I should have but no matter, it was definitely a distressed sound.

I didn't want to be standing with him in my ex-boyfriend's bedroom learning about a sea of trouble I hadn't even known I was drowning in. Wistfully, I thought of the day he'd been human and how easy things had been between us for those few hours. "You said Victor might not accept this alibi either," I reminded him when he put his arms around me.

"No, he might not accept it." Read: probably won't. "But if we have had a falling out, he will be more confident when he attempts to use you against me if it comes to a trial."

"Me?" I saw myself being dragged into another mess like Rhodes, this time without Eric.

"The witnesses are human," he said.

"If I'm angry with you … if I hate you," I'd definitely expressed these sentiments earlier in the evening. "He won't expect me to lie for you."

"You won't have to," Eric said quickly. "I am innocent."

Of this anyway. I touched his newly shorn hair, knowing it would always hold a perfect edge, knowing I had done that. It was a small part of him but it was mine. "So what happens next?"

"We find out who is behind the disappearances," he said loudly and matter-of-factly. "The disappearances have occurred all across the country with a young pair in Arkansas and then Felicia here in Louisiana being the most recent. Some of the witnesses have since joined the Fellowship of the Sun; some of those have achieved high positions. But most of them seem to lack any kind of connection. This is where you will help us." Then Eric pinched me, he actually pinched me.

Oh, right. "How can you think I would ever help you again?" I shouted. "You're a monster!" I'd like to thank the Academy, my peers at Bon Temps High, and the patrons of Merlotte's for playing such a vital role in my development as an actress.

"Oh but you will, my lover," Eric said, the threat in his voice making me wince, though I knew it was false. "Don't doubt that."

When our little outburst of drama for whoever was supposed to be listening ended I had to fight not to laugh. This was so many shades of absurd that the color didn't even exist in the Big Box of Crayolas. They had a crayon the exact color of macaroni and cheese but not the color of this particular absurdity.

Part of me was glad that my vampire was so adept at navigating shark-infested waters. That part warred with the one that was convinced that she'd rather just take a plane.

"Can you stay tonight?"

I looked at Bill's bed in horror. Even if (and it was a big, fat, red beans and rice kind of 'if') I could overlook the fact that that was Bill's bed enough to let Eric touch me anywhere near it, being quiet anywhere near Eric's hands, mouth and other parts had never been one of my talents. Victor would probably get suspicious if he heard us start humping like bunnies. Though, maybe we could cover it as angry sex?

"I have things to discuss with Bill," Eric said. "Then I need you to watch when I fall asleep." For once Eric didn't have sex on the brain.

"Why?"

"I will explain after I have spoken with Bill," he said, then, more loudly, "This conversation has gone on long enough."

He left the room and I was surprised to find it wasn't spinning. It was hard for me to care too much that a few young, dangerous vampires had been snatched up. I just wanted me and mine to get out of this safely and be left alone. And maybe some one-on-one time with Eric in a different venue. That'd be good too.

I was supposed to be cowering here under Bill's protection so I guess it wouldn't be a great idea to make a trip home to get some reading material. I did call Amelia though and told her that I was going to stay at Bill's tonight. She was confused, naturally, but I assured her I was safe and would explain later. You know when my house was no longer under surveillance.

Bill had plenty of books of his own, neatly lined up on two sets of shelves in his room. I didn't think he'd mind if I borrowed one while I waited. I'd gotten a few pages into The Count of Monte Cristo when I fell asleep, lying upside down in my former lover's bed.

My body told me it was hours later when Eric woke me, running a cool hand through my hair. "What time is it?" I mumbled.

"Nearly dawn, my lover," Eric said. The room was dark as ever; heavy plates of metal had been pulled down over the windows.

"I'm supposed to watch you sleep,' I said thickly. It was too early for anything but coffee.

"Yes. Victor has learned things he should not have been able to learn. My investigation with Bill was extremely discreet, but he knew of it, of that, and of my suspicions of Felicia's loyalties."

"Bugs?"

"Dreams."

"Huh?" It was definitely too early for eloquence.

"When vampires sleep our minds review the contents of our lives, searching our memories for dangers, opportunities, patterns … it is something like human dreaming but more efficient. There is some possibility that Victor has employed a Walker." He definitely said it with a capital 'W.'

"A what?" The frequency with which I had to ask this and similar questions really annoyed me. One day I would hold all the cards, even if it was just in gin rummy.

"A being—a human, more or less, that can walk in the spirit as well as the flesh. The barriers to a sleeping mind are no great obstacles to a Walker. Especially a vampire mind."

"Why 'especially' a vampire mind?" My attention had gotten rapidly more focused as it tended to do when I was allowed a little new insight to the supernatural world.

"We lead a very dichotomous existence. At night, our bodies and minds are nearly invincible. As you know," Eric said brushing my temple. Not even he knew that I sometimes came upon a frightening crack in that invincibility. "But during the day we are far more exposed. Our sleeping minds do not defend themselves from invasion even as well as human minds do." Whatever that meant.

"Okay, so if Victor's got one of these Walkers working on you, how will I know?"

"You will see him."

Alright then. "What am I looking for?"

Eric had come to sit next to me on Bill's bed and his movements seemed to be getting a little sluggish. I half expected him to yawn. "Something like the way humans depict ghosts," he said, leaning back on Bill's pillows. Bill would just love that, I'm sure. Eric probably hadn't even asked. Bill was probably burying himself in the dirt somewhere right now or climbing down into the crawl space. "He should look somewhat insubstantial. He should glow."

Glow? "Um, Eric?"

"Yes, my lover?" His eyes were already closed.

"I think I've seen … well not seen one of these guys before. In Merlotte's"


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**CHAPTER 14**

I thought I could hear the sounds of birds outside. Though the room was still plunged in artificial darkness, I knew the sun was coming up. "Explain," Eric said, a little more alert now, fighting with the dawn for information he needed.

"It was a few days ago," I said, scrounging around my brain for details. "A busboy at Merlotte's, D'Eriq, said he saw a guy that was glowing. He went into the bathroom after Emma. I didn't see him but D'Eriq said he walked right by me."

"This D'Eriq must be something of a sensitive. Like you." Eric propped himself up on his elbows, thinking. "Describe him."

I assumed he didn't mean D'Eriq. I also didn't especially like when he made comments about me that he clearly didn't intend to explain. "I didn't see him," I reiterated, my throat feeling a little funny from all the whispering. "But D'Eriq said he glowed and that he looked kind of like Emma. He thought they might be related."

Eric nodded as if I'd confirmed something. "Her brother."

Because I didn't know what else to say I said, "She never mentioned a brother." I'd kind of gotten into the habit of thinking of Emma as Eve since it fit nicely into the world I knew. So maybe I was about to meet Adam. Oh wait … ew. I didn't love describing the mother and father of mankind as siblings. "Are they close?" I asked a little weakly.

"Incestuously," Eric confirmed. Ew again. "Though Emma Asli was very careful not to mention him to me when we spoke." I could almost see the dawn pulling on him as he talked. His neck didn't seem to want to continue supporting his head. But he was making a valiant effort to stay awake.

"So how do you know anything about him? And aren't they supposed to be very human and all?" It was a great mystery to me where supes got all there information. Was there a National Supe Library somewhere with books like _The History of the Weird_ kept on file?

"The Density is the archetype and progenitor of all humanity. How could it be only female?" Okay, so that made sense. "I told you in each incarnation, they take on different aspects of humanity. Some humans can read minds. Others can step into souls." I should probably ask later if Emma or ... Adam was likely to show up as a vamp since vamps are former humans. I hoped not. "Also," Eric said like it was a sleepy afterthought, "I have met him."

Communication was definitely something we'd need to work on as a couple. Unfortunately it fell at the end of a long list of things we needed to work on. Currently, at the top of that list was 'Staying Alive' since I had a feeling that a Sheriff kidnapping one of the king's informants was probably a stakeable offense. "When? And why did you think this wasn't something you should mention?" The exhaustion in my voice almost passed for calm.

But Eric had dropped back into the pillows and his eyes were closed. "Eric!" I shouted near his ear. "Come on, five more minutes." I slapped him and tried not to think about the fact that keeping a vampire awake in daylight was considered a pretty aggressive form of torture.

Eric's eyes opened and he struggled to sit up. He was pretty old so it must have been closer to dawn than he'd let on for him to be this out of it. I wedged my arm and then my shoulder under him, pushing him toward a sitting position. It was no easy task. He's a big guy and he wasn't helping me much. "Come on!" I dug my right knee into his lower back, using my whole body to keep his torso vertical.

Even sitting, Eric was having a hard time of it. "I'm sorry, honey," I said, remembering too late that someone might be listening and who knows what they'd thought about my screaming at him to wake up. Hopefully, the listener was thoroughly buried for daylight by now. "I'm sorry to do this to you. I just need to know if this guy can hurt me." The idea of some man I couldn't see walking right into Bill's bedroom while the vampires were unconscious was more than a little disturbing. I'd had my fill of strange men invading my personal space.

Eric leaned back against me so that I had to brace myself with my right arm to stay upright. His head rested against my shoulder and he shook it slowly. "He is not … an honorable man." That wasn't exactly the kind of thing I wanted to hear from Eric of all people. He himself was no Boy Scout. "But he cannot touch you," he said softly. "Try to relax, my lover." Then he was gone.

With his full weight on me, my arms were definitely feeling the strain. I leaned back against the pillows propped against Bill's headboard. They were thick and soft and I thought I could smell my former lover on them. He would just _love_ coming in here to find them smelling of Eric and me. A year ago that thought would have made me feel righteous vindication. Now it just made me feel guilty and a little sad.

I looked down at Eric's face, pillowed against my shoulder. He looked dead. It's hard to say what was different since, technically, he's always dead. Maybe I've become too used to corpses because, rather than being significantly grossed out, I really just wanted to protect him.

The room was full of the shadows of old furniture. The house around the room was silent in the way that houses only are if they lack activity in the daytime. It's as if the house knows night is the time for sleeping and it feels empty and desolate without the mundane routines of the day-to-day activity due it. I wrapped my arms around Eric's chest, knowing that soon enough some part of me would lose circulation and I'd have to move out from under him.

While I could, I held him, stroking his hair absently and scanning the room for a man I couldn't see.

Time passed like sugar dissolving in ice tea—slowly and grudgingly. Eric had told me to watch and he'd told me to relax. Watching was easy, if futile. Relaxing was a little more difficult without the help effect of the bond which was usually better than chamomile tea and scented candles. I guess it was out of commission while Eric was dead to the world. Still, it had been the first time in a while that I had been in a comfy bed and so far away from the constant buzz of other people's brains. Someone else being in my house at night (someone else human, that is) was probably the biggest drawback to having a roommate.

Now that I'd focused on it, I found I really was enjoying the silence. If only the slight tingle in my left hand that demanded more blood to the limb would go away, this would be pretty pleasant.

It wasn't the creak of a floorboard that made me look up, but it should have been. A man was frozen, mid-stride, halfway between the door and the bed. Our eyes locked, his glowy dark ones boring into my surprised blues. "You can see me," he said, grinning at the same time that I said, "What do you want?"

I'd been a little too distracted by all the new information before to ask Eric what I should actually do if I saw the Walker. And that was definitely what this guy was. He was a little over six feet tall, I'd guess, with dark, well-defined features. No, well defined didn't do them justice. He was lovely, breathtakingly so. It took me a second look to take in just how exquisite he was as if it wouldn't all fit in one glance, If this was the First Man, I don't know why Adam and Eve bothered with fig leaves or how in tarnation Eve could have been tempted by a piece of fruit.

He was also the spitting image of Emma. Except that he was clearly male and except for the glowing. And the fact that if I looked straight at him I could kind of see the outline of Bill's dresser through his head. He echoed his sister so soundly that I kind of wondered why I didn't find Emma more attractive. I guess I'm just really oriented toward men. They had that same everywhere and nowhere look, that same sense of forever about them.

The Walker took in the possessive way I'd locked my arms around Eric's chest. He chuckled, a sound like wind in the trees and the plates of the Earth moving. "I will not bite, woman," he said, flashing a glowing white smile. "Not as hard as he does."

My brain seized onto the fact that he had recognized Eric as a vampire. That was something Emma didn't seem able to do. I filed the tidbit away to be examined later, it might be important, even if walking through walls was something I was pretty sure Emma couldn't do either. "Who sent you?"

"Sent me? I was out for a stroll at sunrise and came across this fabulous old house," he said in a tone that was not intended to convince me of a word he said. "I wanted to take a look around but I found it locked up tight so I was obligated to leave my body outside." The Walker looked down at a pale-bright hand and flicked nonexistent dirt from under a fingernail. "What's it to you, woman?"

"My name is Sookie," I said doggedly. "I won't let you hurt him."

"My reputation proceeds me, does it? Look here, woman," he said, crossing the remaining distance to the bed and sticking an arm right through it. "In many ways I am quite handicapped in this state." He retrieved the arm and waved it through Eric's ankles then he stepped forward and leaned his face in like he was going to kiss me.

My head felt full as a teakettle about to whistle. There was something writhing around under my skull, taking heavy steps across my cerebrum. With a cry I threw up my mental shields and found relief.

The Walker was gone and so was the sensation in my head. I cast my eyes around the room, looking for evidence of a man who could probably sink right through the floorboards. Something in me told me he was still here. He hadn't completed his task after all. If he was here and I couldn't see him … of course. My shields were in place now, just as they always were when I was working, to keep the noise of the patrons at bay.

I took a deep breath and looked down at Eric, dead and defenseless. I lowered my shields.

"You are the telepath," the Walker said immediately. "My sister told me about you." He was sitting so that his trim torso was half-sunk into Eric's stomach. It looked really odd.

"Emma's my friend," I said, hoping I was right.

"And I'm not? You wound me." A wounded person should not be grinning like that.

"You've been stealing Eric's secrets." We both looked down at the vampire in question and I got the feeling that Eric was the rope and we were about to play tug-of-war.

"You wouldn't know anything about that would you, telepath?" I couldn't decide if 'telepath' was a better epithet than 'woman.'

"Sookie," I reminded him. "And I don't do it on purpose."

Carelessly, he shrugged thick shoulders that glowed like a 40-watt bulb. "I do."

I scowled, not amused.

"Don't clench your jaw at me, woman," he said. "You haven't even asked me what my purpose is yet."

Fine. "What is your purpose, Walker?" I asked sweetly.

"Well I didn't say I'd tell you," he pointed out, entirely too pleased with himself.

"I like your sister better."

The Walker raised a dark brow, looking like the poster boy of sly inquiry. "I wonder if he would agree?" He nodded at Eric and then studied my face hard without ever managing to look very serious. He kept looking at me and I kept giving him nothing. He sighed. "You know, you're like a pet to him. A trained poodle," he tried. I was sick tired of people telling me how much Eric didn't care about me so I didn't let a thing show on my face. If he wanted a reaction, he wouldn't get one here.

When the Walker reached out a hand to stroke my face with fingers that couldn't touch me, I pushed with my feet, backing away and taking Eric with me. But his fingers found me anyway and I felt them slide over my mind, not pressing just stroking, assessing what he found there. "Don't worry, woman, I cannot read your thoughts," he said absently. Then his hand stopped as if he'd found something. "A blood bond is it? So you're the one." Pause. "I helped him once, you know. In a way I'd have thought he'd share with you." He sighed. "Why are my kindnesses always the first things forgotten?"

He pulled away from me and regarded me with as much seriousness as I'd seen from him yet. I wondered if he could see on my face that I hated him already. He made a little bow. "Jack Smith," he said like he'd just remembered that since he'd broken into the house we'd skipped introductions. "You don't need to be afraid of me, Sookie. I'll keep my hands to myself." As if he had a choice. "You're a pretty little poodle but you're not my sister." If he noticed the expression of disgust on my face he ignored it.

"I have business to take care of," he said in a soothing voice. "And I promise I will not hurt you or your vampire any more than I must."

"How very reassuring."

The Walker, Jack, laughed. "Don't be like that, Sookie. I swear it. On anything you like." His assessing eyes took me in and lit up with a devilish charm. "Are you a Christian, Sookie? I'll swear for you on my own name if you like." The prospect seemed to amuse him, but me? Not so much. "No? Well, I must be going regardless. Maybe you'll see me around."

With that, Jack leaned back and sunk into Eric, their faces meshing so that Eric's seemed to glow for a split second. In that split second, I panicked, and reached for the Walker with my hands and my mind.

_Then I ceased to be Sookie and became Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole._


	15. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**Note:** Sook goes through the looking glass in this part and it's a bit trippy. Good luck.

**CHAPTER 15**

I fell, pulled along by the hands through a world that didn't want me there. I hit something all too solid, face first. My fingers were wrenched painfully but I kept my grip. There was a sound that was oddly similar to the sound of peeling a green banana and I felt a kind of tearing and then something fell away. It wasn't painful exactly.

I moved on, being dragged through something dark and grainy. I thought that this must be what quicksand feels like—not quite solid but oh so dangerous. On and on I went through cavernous space, ducking my head this way and that to avoid polar bodies. In the distance there were stars. If there had been a floor, I would have had carpet burn.

Light was rising ahead. As it gathered, I could see my strange new source of gravity. It was a foot and I had a death grip on the ankle. The foot was attached to a blue jeans-clad leg and I was at a bad angle to be sure but I'd guess the leg connected to a waist, followed by a torso, then probably a head. The leg walked along a path I could barely see. On either side of the path was a whole lot of nothing.

On and on the leg walked and brighter and brighter the light got until I thought I couldn't stand it. Finally, when it had gotten so I could see the light through my eyelids, we stopped moving. There was a sigh from a above and Jack shook his leg. "You'd think my word wasn't good enough," he said in mock disbelief. "Let go."

"I can't see," I protested.

"She's mistaken me for an optometrist," he said to no one and sighed again like it was something that happened often. "Open your eyes, woman. Not even _this_ soul will blind you now that you've gone and jumped out of your skin."

Not seeing any way around it if I was to have any chance of defending myself, I opened my eyes. The light was frighteningly bright but, sure enough, it seemed to pass right through me, bumping into the little microscopic bits that made up Sookie Stackhouse but not jostling them enough to do damage.

Jack stood above me with arms crossed. The Walker looked more solid in the blisteringly bright light. He looked like a very handsome man, one who was beautiful but unattainable. Before, he'd looked like a man hammered out of moonbeams and fantasies. He seemed to be looking over me with the same scrutiny I gave him. "So this is what you look like in the spirit, Sookie Stackhouse." He nodded approvingly. "Much better. Your physical form is a bit much—a caricature of you."

I made a face.

"I was giving you a compliment," he said. "They never get it, do they?"

"You need to work on that," I replied. "What happened to me? Where are we?" I was wondering if, since I'd been able to grab him, I could do him some damage. But it might be better to figure out where I was and how to leave before I started throwing punches.

"You went for a Walk. I can't blame you, the landscape is breathtaking," he said glibly. "If you'll just let go, Miss Stackhouse, I'll be on my way and you can explore a bit."

"Uh-huh. That sounds like a brilliant plan." Fat chance. I tightened my grip on his ankle.

Genuine displeasure crossed the Walker's face. "Now you're just being impolite," he said and reached down to wrap a hand around one of my wrists. If it was air we were breathing here, I drew in a big, gasping lungful of it. I felt like I was a tube of toothpaste and a curious kid had decided to squeeze until he found out how much was inside. He squeezed lightly and a burst of pressure bloomed behind my eyes. I knew if he pressed harder his fingers would go right through me. "Unpleasant, isn't it?" Jack asked innocently. He let go of my wrist. "Here's the part where you return the courtesy."

I shook my head, privately amazed that I had managed to hang on through that. "No. First you leave and you promise not to come back." And take me with you. That's a given. As I lay there, digging my nails into my own palms, I had to wonder, since his grip on my wrist had been just plain awful, how much worse it would be if he decided to use that free foot to give me a kick?

"But you don't seem to put much stock in my promises, woman." We were back to that. "In fact, you seem quite determined to make me break the one I made not to harm you. And I had intended to keep it too. You don't know how rare that is." He put on a show of flamboyant sadness but if I knew people (and if anyone knows people, I know people) there was some real sadness in there too.

The Walker picked up his bound foot, rolling the ankle and attempting to step over my arms so my wrists would be twisted at odd angles. I put my elbows to the floor and yanked down. "Stronger than you look," he said mildly. "Strong for a woman." That always threw them for a loop.

"A little vampire blood does a body good," I said, matching his light tone, though I was still laying pretty gracelessly at his feet.

"I don't think so Sookie," he leaned down to grasp the fingers of my left hand, trying to pry them loose. There was a little strain in voice or maybe I was just hoping it into existence. "Blood's a physical magic and this is not a fist fight. You're Spirit Walking, my dear, remember?"

He got my index finger loose and I felt like my guts were in a pressure cooker. Still, I got the sense that though Jack the Walker might be more used to getting into fisticuffs without the benefit of actual fists, we were pretty evenly matched. Jack was maybe a little slower on that uptake.

I reversed my grip, quick as a copperhead's kiss and I had _his _wrist now. Jack's eyes bulged a little as he realized he'd made a mistake. He took a swing at me with the other fist but I caught it almost easily like someone was standing beside me, telling me what to do next. I used his body weight (spirit weight?) to haul myself to my feet. "I'm strong _for a woman_. Remember?" Taunting is not classy, I know, but he started it.

"Strong for a man," he said with approval. "Strong for a Walker." Jack wasn't quite finished though. As I was rising, he tangled his feet up in mine and threw his weight at me, trying to trip us both up and come down on top. But I braced my legs, pressing his wrists against his own chest and forcing him back with a strength neither of us knew I possessed. It was as if a deep well of raw, brute power had opened up inside me and invited me to drink as much as I liked. I knew it wasn't mine.

One of my hands shouldn't have been big enough to pin both his wrists effectively but, tossing all my eggs in this basket of new strength, I gripped his right wrist with the fingers of my left hand and then wedged his left under my thumb. The grip was awkward and my fingertips seemed to sink into his skin a little. Maybe Jack had exhausted himself in the struggle because his efforts to free his hands were almost beneath my notice. "You used to be better than this." He seemed to talk to himself a lot.

I placed my free right hand on his chest, palm down, over where his heart should be. "If you won't go, I will press my hand right through your ribs." Jack was breathing hard, close to my face. I thought he might try some other trick but instead he switched tactics. "I always forget about blood bonds," he said with a strange mixture of flippancy and self deprecation. "Taking on even an accidental Walker so near to the soul of one she's bonded to was not my best idea ever."

Jack was in silhouette since the source of the light was behind him. I remembered the look I'd had inside Eric's head when he was human. "So vampire's do have souls, then?" I said lightly. Maybe he was only pretending I had the upper hand to catch me off guard, but I'd take that hand, and I'd keep a sharp eye on him.

"Things don't just disappear."

The ball was in my court. Time to call the shot. "We're leaving. You're taking me out of here." I had the strong suspicion that 'here' was a part of Eric that I really shouldn't be trespassing upon.

"Alright, Sookie," he said, granting me my name now that I'd bested him. "But aren't you curious about all this. Where are we? How did you get here? All that?"

Sure I was. "And you so suddenly and desperately want to tell me because ….?"

"Because we are not enemies and the sooner you see that, the sooner we can _both_ carry on with what we need to do," he said matter-of-factly.

"We're not enemies?" I said, oozing disbelief. "You haven't been going into Eric's head, a vampire who I am bonded to, need I remind you, and stealing his secrets to feed to Victor Madden?" Should I have mentioned Victor? Too late now.

"You're not looking at the big picture, Sookie." Ladies and Gentlemen, we find the Defendant guilty of all charges. "You want to save the vampire, Eric Northman, and yourself. I want to save humanity. These are not mutually exclusive goals."

I snorted. "You want to save _humanity_? What a philanthropist."

He drew his head back in denial. "No, I promise you I am quite selfish. Humanity and I are nearly one and the same, after all." He grinned. "Just wait a spell before you decide to crush my aorta. Let me show you a thing or two and if you're not convinced, I'll be just as crushable then as now."

"Fine."

"We'll need to turn around a bit," he said, rotating slowly toward the light source, which was apparently Eric's soul. "And if you'll just give me my hands back this'll go much easier."

I glared my refusal. "Couldn't hurt to try," he said.

When we'd turned enough that both of us were more or less facing the light, I gasped and nearly dropped the Walker's hands. Before us a cosmos was being born. Eric's soul, if that's really what it was, glowed like it was the sun that had set the stars on fire. In fact, bits of itself were constantly breaking off to wheel off and hang in the dark just like stars. Sometimes those little sparks would dive back in to join the splendid whole. "Impressive, no?" Jack said, almost proudly. "You won't see another soul like this one."

"Why not?" I was perfectly dazzled and if Jack hadn't been nearly as transfixed, our fight might have begun all over again.

"There is more to your vampire than meets the eye," he said cryptically. "Like you." He laughed. "Maybe you are a fitting match for him. Though you are very young."

"And he is not," I added in my stupor.

"A truer statement was never made," Jack said and then shook himself. Sometime in our staring I had released one of his wrists and now I held only the right. It was a more comfortable position but not as secure. We'd also moved significantly closer to the soul. If it had a tangible outer surface, I thought we must be close. "Careful now," Jack said. "Don't touch or he'll know we were here."

"He will?"

"Forensic evidence, Grissom," Jack said. "Fingerprints on the soul. Dead giveaway." He had the most perfect teeth, wonderfully framed when he smiled. "Watch now."

The Walker looked around at the local heaven full of stars and beckoned to one, making little whispery sounds. It drifted toward us serenely, not at all like the brief streaks of light that were real falling stars. "This one knows you," Jack said, as if the little bit of light were a puppy. "It was lost for a long time. But I found it for your vampire when he asked. It and others like it."

The little star hovered before us and in its midst I saw myself. I looked stressed and tired and more than a little annoyed. My eyes were closed against the water falling over my face. The angle opened and, whoa, I looked naked. There was shampoo in my hair and as I searched for the soap, eyes closed, a voice I knew well rang out of the memory (since that is what it was). "I'll do that for you," it said.

Oh I knew this memory. It directly proceeded probably the best shower in the history of human existence. And I'm barely exaggerating.

The look I gave Jack, as I saw flesh-colored shapes swim in the corners of my vision, was more than a little dirty. "This is not for public property," I said firmly. "So I'd rather you not be looking at it."

Jack shrugged and barked a short laugh. "The Viking seemed glad enough that I found it."

"It was you? You made him remember!" I said, putting two and two together, multiplying a few times, dividing, taking the square root and finally reaching four.

The Walker nodded. "Eric contacted me just before the vampire hierarchy of your state was overthrown, I believe. Walkers are not typically well received by the other members of the supernatural world. So when the opportunity arose, I was happy to help."

I was sure Eric had paid in whatever currency it is that Walkers are paid. "What do you mean 'found' it? Eric was under a spell."

Jack pointed a free finger at a few stars that were nose-diving toward the soul of the vampire in question. "A soul is unlimited potential. It can be anybody. Memories are like little mirrors that remind the soul who it is," he said. "The spell on the vampire stopped his memories from returning to his soul."

My eyebrows were leaping skeptical hurdles; we'd definitely walked (Walked, hah) off the edge of the map of weird and here there be monsters. "So Hallow, the witch, she, what, put up a fence around his _soul_?" I laughed, feeling a little like a penguin confronted with a nuclear missile. This was all just a little too big and dangerous for me to take in. "Maybe with a 'keep off the grass' sign?"

Jack laughed too, though his definitely had more humor in it. "Something like that," he said. "When the spell was rather crudely broken, the, uh, the fence kind of folded in on itself. All the memories he'd made under the spell were trapped inside it. It took a little elbow grease to free them."

I pictured a bunch of those little star things dipping in to say 'Hi, remember me?' to Eric's soul as he sat on my bed in the dark the night Felipe de Castro had taken over. I remembered Eric's bewildered expression that night and thought it probably had something to do with the swarm of helpful little fireflies suddenly released from the jar.

What did I say to that? Thank you for giving him back his memories and making my life more complicated in the process? No, that wasn't fair. The memories were Eric's, even if a lot of them featured me. And though I'd spent a lot of time hoping they'd stay tidily locked away, I knew I wouldn't cram them back in the jar now if I was given the choice. Eric and I had had something good then, even if the circumstances had been less than optimal.

Jack was regarding me with some confusion. Maybe he'd expected me to leap into his arms with gratitude. "People should have their memories," he said with resolve. "Forgetting is not the same as forgiving and it does not change the past, only makes it harder for the future to come about."

It sounded like something my Gran would say. "How old are you?" I asked, suddenly curious about this sure-assured being by my side.

"Me?" He clarified, like I might be talking about someone else. I nodded. "A few centuries," he said.

"You look twenty-five," I said frankly. "So does Emma."

"Emma, my sister," he said like he was reminding himself. "Yes, she died recently." He thought for a moment. "There was a boy at the bar where she works. He could see me."

"D'Eriq."

"How old is he?"

"Seventeen, I think," I was really starting to wonder where the tangent was going.

"Then my sister is seventeen. She was born alongside that one. When we die we are reborn with a human that is being born in the moment after our deaths. This D'Eriq is Emma's birth brother." He shook his head. "She is very young." This seemed to be a big concern of his.

"So why do you both look twenty-five? Eric said you were very old." Well, he'd said Emma was very old but I assumed that went for Jack too.

"What we are is very old. Who we are … changes," Jack said. I was pretty sure he was only telling me all this to get on my good side, or at least the side of me that didn't have heart squeezing in mind. "We will appear always as the average of the human race. If you could take a composite photograph of every male that's ever existed, every old man and every infant that died at birth, it would look just like me." I looked at him like if I squinted hard enough I'd be able to find the resemblance to a toothless old guy on a Smuckers jar.

"Are you working for Victor?" As he'd said before, it couldn't hurt to try.

The Walker rolled his eyes as if he couldn't believe I wouldn't just let it drop. "Yes and no. I am here on Victor's orders but if he hadn't … _suggested_ I come, I would have suggested it myself." He shrugged as if the admission was of little consequence. "I Walked into Eric's soul today, yesterday I visited Victor's, who knows where I'll be tomorrow?" He laughed. "Well, I do."

I doubted Victor knew his pet Walker had taken a stroll into his soul. Somehow I didn't think he'd like that much. I wasn't really sure what to make of Jack. He claimed to be out to save humanity. But from what? And why the heck didn't he seem to care too much what happened to the people that made up humanity??

As I mulled it over, I realized that he'd definitely, deliberately set me up for another question. He was directing me but that didn't mean I shouldn't learn what he had to tell me. "You were in Victor's, um, soul?" I realized for the first time how odd it must be for other people to ask if I'd been rooting around in their heads. "Why's he out to get Eric? The king kept him on _and_ he saved the king's life." I'd started the lifesaving procedure but I'm pretty sure Eric and I split the points in Felipe's eyes.

"Exactly," Jack said, eyes sparkling. "I looked at a memory of Victor's in which the King of Nevada announced formally that he owed Eric a life debt. Victor noticed that the king did not look terribly pleased since he is now obligated to forgive Eric for an offense that should be punishable by death." Vampires saved up debts like kids save shiny pennies.

Oh. "So Victor's trying to pin a bunch of nasty stuff on Eric. Stuff that Eric should be killed for doing," I said slowly as I compiled the facts. "So Felipe can forgive him and get the debt out of the way?"

Jack gave me a cocky smile and a patronizing thumbs up. "Way to go. Got it in one."

"But someone's still nabbing the young vampires," I said, assuming that as tangled up as Jack was with Victor and Eric, he'd know about the disappearances. "_Someone_ took Felicia."

"Which is why you should let me carry on," he said, and I got the impression that his amicable, question answering mood was about to end.

"You're helping Victor frame Eric!"

"Yes!" That was definitely frustration on his lovely face. "I am helping Victor. And when the Nevada vampires cart your boyfriend off for a farce of a trial and keep him under lock and key, he'll be safe from whoever has been kidnapping vampires. Which is exactly where we _both_ want him. Sweet Jesus, woman, must I explain everything?"

"He's old," I protested.

"So was Felicia. And Eric Northman is very talented and very strong. He is quite a prize."

Great. Exactly why Hallow had wanted him. Jack's face had closed down and he glared at my hand on his wrist. Maybe he was about rested enough for another scuffle. "Why do you care? About Eric?"

"He is one of mine," Jack said almost sullenly but I knew that wasn't it. I gave just the slightest squeeze on his wrist and made myself confront the fact that, in a way, I was torturing him. "I owe him for the things my sister did to him." He nodded at the stars of memory drifting in the something-like-space. "I've seen that he has told you about that."

"Yes," I said. "But there has to be more than that." He'd said he was out to save humanity. It didn't really all come back to who owed whom did it?

Jack looked at my hand on his wrist and made himself smile. "You could be the right person, I suppose. But now is not the time. You will conduct your business and I will conduct mine. My promise not to harm either of you more than necessary still stands. You would do well to help me keep it."

There was not much else I could do unless I wanted to make good on my threat to press my hand through his chest. I thought of Lochlan and Neave and knew I couldn't stomach it. I shuddered. "You have some ugly memories of your own," Jack said. "If only you had met my sister a thousand years ago. She is not a Walker now, only as much of a sensitive as her birth brother. Back then, she could Walk right into a soul and whisper its hurts away."

Hearing a note of true sadness in Jack's voice, I looked up and caught his eyes. They were deep and eternal like nothing I'd ever seen, except once, when I was a little girl. I had been at over the Bon Temps reservoir on a sunny summer day. I was playing on the shore with Jason when I looked out over the water. The day was beautiful and cloudless and when as I looked, the color of the water matched the color of the sky. For just a second, the horizon line between them disappeared and I could see to infinity.

The moment passed and Jack said, "There was more magic in the world back then. The speech of Walkers today is clumsy stuttering by comparison." His mocking grin included himself in the accusation.

We'd reached a kind of standstill. Eric had only asked me to watch for the Walker, but I'd followed him instead and learned a whole heck of a lot. I'd also learned that there wasn't a whole lot I could do to stop him, and, if he was telling the truth, maybe I didn't _want_ to stop him. Though how I'd explain that it might be better if he spent some time locked up in Nevada was beyond me. Whatever the case, I'd need to talk to Eric, and to do that I'd need to get the heck out of Dodge.

As if he could indeed read my thoughts, Jack said, "I suppose you'd like me to show you out."

"That'd be so kind of you," I said, sweet as Splenda.

Jack gave a satisfied nod since I wouldn't be squishing any of his internal organs. "It'd be easiest if we just Walk through into you instead of going out and you having to find your way back in again."

"Sure," I said, not really sure at all.

"Don't worry, Sookie. I've been this way plenty of times. You're conveniently located for visiting my sister. It's so much shorter to walk." Jack beckoned at another one of the stars. It floated down obligingly and in it I saw my back yard. The lighting was funny. It was night but everything stood out as sharply as if the sun was high in the sky.

Ah, vampire vision.

The shot panned in on my back door and when the door opened, I stood there, in robe and slippers. Jack reached as if to touch the memory then stopped. "Wipe your feet," he commanded like we were really going into my house. He scuffed his feet on the path below us, then looked suddenly guilty. "Sookie, you haven't been having bad dreams lately by any chance?" I'm sure he could tell by my face that the answer was a whopping 'yes.' He looked down right uncomfortable now. "I have been at this for centuries. I am the best there is. And sometimes I still forget to wipe my feet." He was quite annoyed with himself.

"What?"

"I've been Walking in Eric for quite a while now. These are all very complicated matters we're dealing with." He was talking a little quickly. "When I step through to you, to go see my sister, I've been forgetting to wipe my feet. And someone's done a number on him in the dream department, who knows what I've been bringing through."

I had a pretty good idea. "Jack?"

"Yes, Sookie?"

"I like your sister better."

"That is often a popular opinion."

Jack touched the memory of me and I stepped through into myself and into my skin. When my eyes opened I was wedged half under Eric and pretty much every muscle in my body had something to say about that. Mostly, "Ow."

I extricated myself stiffly, feeling oddly loose and heavy. My head was swimming. I shifted it on the pillow. Make that drowning. "What …?" I asked weakly.

"You made it back just fine," Jack's voice, impressed, said above me. "But the magic of the vampire's trance clung to you. You'll feel better when you wake at dark."

How very convenient for Jack. "I …." The world faded to gray but I shoved at it with my will. "I. Work. Sam."

"What?"

"Call Sam," I shouted, though for some reason it sounded way more like a whisper.

"I'll tell Emma," Jack promised.

As I fell into the sleep of the dead, I had just a moment to reflect that I was banking a lot on Jack Smith's promises. Jack Smith. Even his name sounded like a lie.


	16. Chapter 16

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**CHAPTER 16**

"Sookie, wake up."

Eric's voice was cold and brooked no argument. But it wasn't his voice that brought me to consciousness, oh no. Instead my eyes snapped open ready to confront whatever had stirred this overwhelming fear.

I jolted awake, sitting up in one jerky motion that would have had me crashing foreheads with Eric if he hadn't reacted with vampire speed. He was gone from the bedroom with that same speed, but he'd returned, before I could get my breathing under control, with a glass of water in hand.

I took the water and gave him a confused look. "Water always helps," he intoned in a whisper. I wondered if that was a proverb he'd drudged up from his former life or some rule of thumb for dealing with hysterical humans.

Obligingly, I took a big swallow of the water. "Thank you," I said when I could speak.

"I thought you were dead."

There have been times (not many, but a few) when I've expected to have one really pissed off Viking on my hands and Eric's ended up nearly laughing off that perfect plum butt of his instead. Unfortunately, those instances are few and far between and this particular moment definitely qualified as in-between. Eric was pissed. Silent as the grave, face like marble, stare Sookie down, pissed.

"Well … I'm not?" I said hopefully. I hadn't had the gentlest of wake-ups and I was having a little trouble remembering what I'd done to create the possibility of death.

"Oh, no," Eric agreed and then he was kissing me before I could see him coming. I've never been in a good position to observe it but I'd still swear in front of a jury that one of Eric's talents was sprouting extra limbs when it suited him. Right now, I think he had about five pairs of hands and they were all holding me to him. Well, crushing, actually.

I wanted to say, "Hey, Eric, remember breathing? You did it not so long ago. You weren't very good at it." But my witticism came out sounding like, "Nguh!"

Eric didn't let go. He held on long enough that I had some time to reflect. Even with all the weird turns my life had taken, 'Crushed to Death by a Vampire Lover' hadn't ever occurred to me as a possible byline for my tombstone.

When he did (finally) let me go, I gave him a blistering reproach. Near asphyxiation is not an appropriate expression of relief or affection. It just isn't. I thought about giving him a good shove but decided violence was not the best way to underscore my point.

I didn't feel the least amount of guilt coming from Eric through the bond. He'd apologized for hurting me and I was pretty sure he meant it, but Eric often seemed to experience an odd disconnect between his actions and their consequences.

What I did get from the bond was that he was still a little angry (I think anger's his default since he's mostly nixed apprehension, uncertainty, and regret) and more than a little wanted to put Bill's bed to a better use. I leaned away from own personal Shiva. 'Better' was a relative term. To me, the end result of the lusty feelings that my own mutinous body was already echoing would end in a Big Bad Thing. So, as a distraction I blurted, "The Walker came. I went with him."

Well, that worked.

Eric's fingers clamped down on my shoulders while his eyes raked over me, examining me as best he could while I was fully clothed. "I'm fine," I said doing a quick mental run through of my limbs and organs to make sure I was telling the truth. I felt sort of heavy, but I had just woken up from my first (and last, I hoped) daytime trance after all.

"He didn't hurt you?" Eric asked, ignoring my assurances. It was a question he asked a little too often for my tastes.

I decided not to mention my little scuffle with Jack. "No. You said he couldn't, remember?" So I was being deliberately obtuse, but Eric taking off like a bat out of Hell to hunt the Walker down wouldn't do us any good. Unless, of course, Jack had been lying through his teeth the whole time, then it might do a world of good.

Eric was not deterred. "In the flesh, no. But Spirit Walking is extremely dangerous."

"Yeah, I figured that one out on my own," I said.

Eric's fingertips pulled my chin up. "Tell me."

I sighed, feeling the weight of the secrets between us. They were mostly his secrets and yet, he always wanted me to give up mine. "You were right. Victor sent the Walker. He's Emma's brother, or whatever. And … we got into a little bit of a fight. But I won and I learned some things."

"Sookie, lover, you bested Jack Walker in a fight of the spirit?" Eric did impressed rarely but he did it well. "How is this possible?"

I gave him a brief, dirty look but then relented. "I had help. From you, I think." Then it was time to explain, as delicately as possible, that I'd spent a good portion of the day traipsing around the backyard of Eric's soul.

I needn't have bothered with the kid gloves. "I have a soul," Eric said without surprise or astonishment or any emotion behind it at all really. He might as well have tacked, "Good to know," on the end.

"Jack said he, um, Walked in you before and found your lost memories." When I looked up at Eric's face, he was smiling a tiny smile. "You didn't ask him what he did?" I thought of Jack's analogy of a fence around Eric's soul and shuddered.

Eric shrugged. "The Walker cannot be trusted. He's bathed in more blood than any vampire that's existed."

I refrained from pointing out that that might just be because vampires certainly don't bathe in blood. Eric probably wouldn't appreciate my overly literal humor. I had to wonder, if Eric didn't trust Jack, why he'd bothered contacting him.

"Well then you probably don't want to hear this."

###

Downstairs, in Bill's living room, Eric was in the middle of a phone conversation with Pam. Calling it a conversation was really too generous. Their exchange consisted of Eric saying, "Pam, come to Bill's house. Now." Then he hung up. My hearing wasn't acute enough to tell whether Pam got a word in or not.

I'd refused to give Eric even the Reader's Digest version of events until he'd assembled the troops. Meaning Bill and Pam. I told him I didn't want to repeat myself but really I wanted the other two there to (hopefully) back me up if the best course of action turned out to be Eric going quietly to trial in Nevada. Whatever leverage Victor seemed to think I had over Eric was not leverage I could use. Plus, when it came down to it, I might just be the one that insisted he throw some TrueBlood in a rucksack and go on the lam.

When Eric hung up, he turned to Bill, who, I was glad to see, didn't have any apparent bits of loam or graveyard dirt stuck to his polo shirt clad person. "Jack Walker has been in my head."

Jack Walker, like Barry Bellboy. Or two of the four horsemen. I thought about correcting Eric about his name and mechanics of the thing. The Walker didn't go into heads. That's what I did. But maybe even Eric didn't want to dwell too hard on the fact that someone had taken a peek at his soul. That should be an 'invitation only' kind of thing.

"The Density," Bill said flatly, but one raised eyebrow made it a question.

Eric nodded. "The female is living in Bon Temps."

My eyes tried to leap out of their sockets. "You didn't tell him?" Despite Eric's political maneuverings and self-serving plots, the thing he'd had going for him, the thing Bill had told me about him the day I met him at Fangtasia, was that Eric took care of those for whom he was responsible. But neglecting to tell Bill about a woman who could turn him from killer to kitten with a finger between the teeth did not exactly scream Mr. Responsibility.

"Neither did you," Eric said with a knowing smile. I hate knowing smiles. They can mean absolutely anything or nothing at all.

Bill looked between us and said, in the nature of a man clearing his throat, "I heard about the Were at Merlotte's." Whether that meant he'd known or suspected something about Emma, I had no idea. "We should search the perimeter."

"I don't think the Walker would come so close in the flesh to a place where he intended to trespass," Eric replied. "But, yes, let's search until Pam arrives."

Their searching would most likely involve a lot of running through the woods and sniffing at things. They were far better suited than I was to both of those tasks. So I told them I'd be going home to grab something to eat since it'd been quite a long time since I'd had food and Bill's provisions for human guests were pretty sparse. Neither of the vampires was too keen on my leaving but I reminded them that they'd both be out searching Bill's property in excellent position to swoop in for a rescue if I screamed really loudly. Which I promised to do if I so much as stubbed a toe.

Crossing the little cemetery between Bill's property and mine in the middle of the night should probably be creepy but I called much creepier things friends so the graveyard had almost a family feel to it. And since a few Stackhouses and Hales had been laid to rest there, I guess that made sense.

Amelia was home when I came in through the back door. She was making a cup of tea in the kitchen and still wearing her work clothes. "Hi roomie," I said.

"Did you just wake up?" she asked slyly and I realized I probably still had sleep lines on my face. Her mind wondered loud and clear why I'd been at Bill's if I'd been … entertaining Eric. "Emma called earlier to say Danielle was working your shift."

"Good." Rather than making excuses, I decided just to cut to the chase. And to make myself a sandwich. I beckoned Amelia over as I pulled veggies from the refrigerator. She stopped short of whispering distance so I was forced to beckon her again. I felt a little foolish. "What do you know about Walkers?"

"You mean Spirit Walkers?" I nodded and we both blinked against the sharp scent of the onion I was slicing. Amelia shrugged. "They're pretty rare these days," she said. "Which is good because they're pests. Like ants. They get in to everything and it's pretty much impossible to keep them out."

"Ever heard of one being employed by a supe?"

Amelia shook her head, stirring her soccer mom hair. "There's not a lot of them, like I said. That or they're real hush-hush. I know witches used to use them to spy on each other from time to time."

"Yeah?" I said encouragingly. So the spying was definitely not a new precedent.

"Yeah. It got pretty bad. If a witch thought someone was a Walker, he or she would find the body and, uh, burn it." Amelia was uncomfortable. She didn't like to think about this part of her history any more than a white American likes to think too hard on slavery.

"Why burn them?"

Our conversation paused while I turned to the fridge for some mustard. I didn't realize until then that I hadn't even asked Amelia to whisper. She must be getting pretty accustomed to my state of near-constant crisis. "They leave their bodies behind when they're, you know, out doing their thing. Witches were afraid if they killed the body outright, they'd be a seriously ticked off spirit walking around the world. But pain … enough pain … to the body will alert the Walker and bring him back to the flesh. With burning, the witches could be sure to get the whole package."

"Wow," I whispered.

Amelia nodded her agreement. "It got pretty turned around eventually. The Walkers were afraid. Rightly so. So they started outing the witches and … well, then there was Salem." Amelia sipped her tea. "Poetic justice, I guess."

"I guess."

"May I ask why you're interested in Walkers," Amelia said, deciding the question was within her rights as roommate to ask.

"Oh, I met one last night," I said as lightly as possible while whispering, chewing, and not feeling all that light.

"Well, alright then." Yeah, Amelia was definitely getting used to the dangerous side of Crazy Sookie Stackhouse.

I ate my sandwich in bigger than ladylike bites. If Pam drove anything like Eric, it wouldn't take her the full hour to get to Bon Temps from Shreveport. "Listen, I've got to go back to Bill's for awhile. I shouldn't be too long." I'd probably eat those words long before I got another sandwich but I was hoping they were true. Souls might be getting invaded and conspiracies staged but I still had to work the dayshift tomorrow.

"Trouble in River City?" Amelia asked, trying to show her concern without prying.

"Yeah," I said, smiling my love for old musicals. "Eric put a pool table in at Fangtasia so Bill and I are starting a band."

Amelia struggled to keep a straight face. "Worried for Pam's moral fiber?"

"Exactly."

###

When I relayed Jack's tale of Victor Madden's plans for Eric, my vampiric audience members didn't gnash their fangs or fly out the windows like angels of vengeance, as I'd feared.

"That does sound like Victor," Pam said, tucking back a stray hair that had escaped her headband. "And Felipe would love to be out of Eric's debt." The vampires agreed all around. The 'logic' of the threat seemed to erase from their minds the possibility that Jack could have been lying about the whole thing.

"But you said your new bosses were forward-thinking," I accused Eric. "I thought you liked them."

"They are and I do," Eric said, like he hadn't just found out he was the target of a conspiracy. Maybe he was used to it. "Felipe is always abreast of the future. That he should want to rid himself of a debt to me is no surprise, as Pam said. That Victor would see the opportunity for personal gain in the situation is even less of one."

I had to pick my jaw up off the floor and tuck it back in to place. From Eric, who always seemed to run a little hot, I expected anger and activity. Pam, I thought, should have been more worried for her Maker. At least she wasn't cracking jokes.

"So either Eric goes to trial so Felipe can pardon him for crimes he didn't commit or we find out who's actually behind the kidnappings." Bill's voice was cool and calm. At least that was to be expected since it was always like that and Bill didn't really like Eric all that much.

"Why does Felipe even have a debt to you?" I asked with the backing of all my recently formed knowledge of vampire politics. "He didn't kill you and you paid him back by preventing him from being killed. Aren't you even?"

"He did not kill me because I am an asset," Eric grinned, rather proud of himself. He took being someone's 'asset' way better than I ever did. "You and I saved his life before I'd completed the formal oaths to him as my king. He owes me."

"Can't you just, I don't know, forgive him the debt?" I was kind of hoping this would be one of those times where I, with my non-twisted, thoroughly human mind, had come up with a plan so simple it was beneath the vampires' notice.

Nope.

"Why would Eric want to do that?" Pam asked, leaning forward on Bill's couch a little to stare at me more closely. She actually steepled her fingers over her bottle of TrueBlood.

"To avoid going to trial," I said like they were all mad. They seemed to be thinking the same thing about me.

"Sookie, with the King of Nevada, Louisiana, and Arkansas in Eric's debt we are all safer," Bill said, definitely including me in that 'we.' "And simply forgiving the debt would appear weak." Eric, who sat closest to me, made a low sound in his throat as if the very suggestion of weakness insulted him.

"So what's the plan? Try to hunt down the vamp-nappers and hope Eric doesn't get subpoenaed?"

"Yes!" Eric said, though whether he was delighted at my grasp of the situation or by the new vocabulary, it was hard to say.

"I'll start listening in," I said wearily, fully aware that my ability was my best bet for helping Eric.

"That would probably be much more effective if you did it in Fangtasia," Eric said with a dazzlingly fangy smile.

"We're supposed to be on the outs," I said. I was glad he could find so many things to be amused about in a situation that might very well lead to his capture and draining or to his imprisonment in Nevada. Would Felipe lash him to a chair with silver chains or would he be put up in a prison suite complete with a mini-bar stocked with TrueBlood and a silver handle on the door?

"I don't intend to go to trial," Eric said brazenly. "And you are supposed to heel very well." Eric probably realized he'd crossed a line when I made a strangled noise and Bill rose to his feet. "I am saying that it would not necessarily arouse suspicion," Eric said, hands open in apology or an appeal to logic. "Victor knows I prefer to keep you close."

That mollified me some but Bill didn't sit down again. Eric didn't seem to notice.

"I'll call you when I get off work," I said with a sigh. Though I'd been in full vampire zonk-out for several hours, my sleep schedule was a mess and I was ready to take steps towards correcting it. As long as those steps led to my bed.

There was an awkward moment when both Eric and Bill moved to see me to the door. "Sookie is my guest," Bill said; he hadn't quite righted himself yet from the 'heeling' incident.

"And she is my woman," Eric said like he didn't know why there was an argument.

"I'll do the honors if you boys would rather stand around comparing fang-size," Pam said. Her own fangs were partially extended like she thought my goodbyes usually involved bloodletting. But Eric won the argument soon after and Pam retreated to the kitchen for another blood.

"Goodnight Bill," I said quietly as I opened the front door. "And thank you."

Bill inclined his head to me. "Goodnight."

On Bill's porch, Eric didn't waste any time. He lifted me with disorienting speed and said, "Remember?" Then he swung me around and we took off on our second-ever piggyback run across the graveyard. I measured distance by the rush of the downhill from Bill's property to mine and by the thrillingly weaving path Eric took around gravestones but we still got to my back porch earlier than I expected. "May I come in?" Eric asked when he set me down.

"On the outs," I reminded him, breathless and pink-cheeked.

His voice came out of the dark space right next to my ear. "Which will be very apparent when you rescind my invitation."

I swallowed a lump in my throat, then nodded. If Eric did go to trial, I wanted to be able to help. Not that I had any idea what help I'd be. But if I wasn't involved, I wouldn't be there. And if I wasn't there, I'd have to wonder what was happening to him from a thousand miles away. "Come in."

We made it across the porch and through the kitchen and down the hall to my old room with its big bed. I wasn't entirely sure how since only the crossing of the exposed back porch had been done with any measure of grace. I also wasn't entirely sure that Amelia had gone upstairs for the night but I really hoped she had because otherwise she definitely saw more of me than is required for one roommate to see of another. She would have seen more of Eric too but I doubted very much that he'd mind.

Though I'd been wary since Eric informed me that I was probably being watched, I said goodnight to him with the exuberance of a soldier's girl sending her man off to war. I tried to keep in my mind that we should be quick to avoid suspicion, that I should be quiet, and I should shoo him away instead of letting him hold me. But in my head too was the thought that goodnight might be goodbye. At least for a little while.

An hour or so after I'd failed at all three of my ambitions, Eric kissed me awake, shaking me gently. "Time for Act Two, my lover," he said.

I dressed slowly, my feet seeming to stick to the floor like my socks didn't want to leave the room anymore than I did. Then it was my turn to see him out.

"You have pleased me tonight, lover," he said running a roughly suggestive finger over my bottom lip. "You will attend me at Fangtasia tomorrow night."

"No."

Eric just laughed and jerked me to him in the shadows of the porch. The pull had been forceful and his lips were bruising but the feel of his body against mine was sweet and his hands on my hips were worshipful. "Eric Northman," I said loudly, shoving at him with a fist that wanted to ball up in his shirt and pull him back. "You are not welcome here. I rescind your invitation."

My screen door banged shut behind him.

It was late but there was a lot to do and I didn't care. I flipped through the too-bright menu on my cell phone's screen and found Emma's number. "Can you come in early tomorrow? We need to talk." I didn't think Emma was the kind of person to be especially surprised by rude late-night calls.

"Yeah, I can."

"Good. Thanks for calling Danielle for me, by the way." I didn't want to be completely rude. "And Emma, if your brother goes Walking tonight, tell him to wipe his gosh-darned feet."


	17. Chapter 17

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**Note:** In addition to nycsnowbird's beta work, the excellent AmaZen also took a red pen to this.

**CHAPTER 17**

The next day storm clouds, the flat gray ones that look more like stretches of colorless sky than proper clouds, hung over Bon Temps. They dispassionately threatened rain all day but didn't get around to the business of actually producing any weather until it was time for me to go to work.

One minute I was lacing up my Reeboks with their cobbled on non-slip soles, feeling annoyed that a spring morning had been wasted on gloomy weather and the next I was out the door and clamping the mouth of my purse shut against the long-expected rain. It didn't even have the courtesy to be a real rain. It was that cold, dismal kind of drizzle that sneaks down your collar and makes your hair puff up with damp and static.

By the time I made it to my mailbox and opened my window to retrieve the inevitable stack of bills and credit card offers, the rain was showing a little more life. The wind had definitely picked up and the gray day had taken on the strange shadowy-bright light of an early summer storm.

I passed the turn for Merlotte's on my way to the bank, planning to deposit a few rolls of small bills so I could take the money out again in more usable denominations. Driving down main street was like driving into night. The trees that lined the road whipped in the wind, their leaves turning up silver bellies now that the storm had won out against the sun. The rain came down hard enough to tear lives and small branches. I coaxed my windshield wipers into overdrive.

In the parking lot of the bank, I made the executive decision not to make the run through the rain for the door. Seconds later, as if the Lord wanted to let me know I'd made the right choice, hail fell against my windshield like pellets from a BB gun. I wondered idly if Amelia had remembered to set the hanging flower baskets from the front porch out in the rain and, if she had, if she was now rescuing them from the hail.

Since the storm didn't look like it was going to blow itself out any time soon, I opted to go for just one soaking and started my car up to head back to Merlotte's. Since I'd aborted the plan to go to the bank, I got to the bar even earlier than I'd intended. I was pretty glad about that though since the rain was going pretty hard, I hadn't brought a coat, and my uniform is a white t-shirt.

"You're early, Sookie," Sam said when I burst in the employee door and then into his office. "Wet enough for you out there?" He'd asked it before he'd noticed just how little my soaked-through shirt left to the imagination. Then he reddened and I hastily shoved my purse into a desk drawer and made my way to the dining room.

I rung out my hair and fought my shorts back into place. I'd managed to soak up an impressive amount of water on the short sprint from my car to the back door. Since I had the extra time, I took a thorough look at all the stock after I'd turned the chairs down. There were only a few sugar packets left in the basket behind the bar and we kept a pot of coffee on for the morning shift so the sugar needed to be stocked. One of the racks that held glasses was half full. I headed back to the kitchen to check the dish tank but all the dishes had been returned to their places.

On my way back to the dry-stock closet the electricity went out. I made a sound of annoyance and then another when I walked into the stock room door that had been left open. I leaned inside the doorframe in the dark, wondering if the outage would be a blip or a full on event. Power outages became events in Bon Temps when they lasted long enough to threaten the food in the freezer. Then they were all people wanted to talk about for a few days.

The lights came back on for an instant and in the flash I saw a dark face, high above me. The power failed again, and then, in a second flash, I saw that the face had rushed down to my level, coming toward me in the dark. I screamed.

Under my scream I heard something heavy hit the floor, like a body had fallen behind me in the dark. There was a soft glow coming from somewhere but I couldn't make out any more than rough shapes. I backed towards the door, knowing it was just behind me and there'd be a little more light in the hallway. My feet encountered something sticky and I shuddered, groping behind me for the cinderblock surface of the wall. I tried to be as quiet as possible but had to quell little panicked sounds when I couldn't seem to find the wall, let alone the door.

I must have left the door open without realizing it because suddenly I was out in the hallway. There, I had the benefit of the light filtering in from the door that opened to the dining room. I took a cautious step backwards. Sam's office was only a few feet away.

"Sookie!" Two voices called at nearly the same time, one coming from Sam's office and the other from the stock room. Sam bounded into the hallway, hand on the hem of his shirt like he was ready to whip the shirt off and change at a moment's notice.

A shadowy figure stumble-stepped out of the stockroom. Sam recognized her before I did. "Emma, I heard Sookie scream."

In the poor light, Emma's head snapped once between me and Sam. "Oh, I, uh, I was up on the ladder, looking for the case of glasses. I scared her when the power went out. I don't think she knew I was there."

"Oh, thank God!" I said, but they ignored me.

"Is she alright?" Sam asked, taking a step toward the stock room. I swear he was staring right through me.

"I'm fine, Sam," I said with a sharp, annoyed little wave. "Thanks."

But Emma threw up both hands as if to block Sam's access to the stock room. "She tripped, bruised her dignity. Give her a second, okay?" Emma said, patting her hip to indicate that by 'dignity' she meant 'rear end.'

"Well as long as she's okay," Sam said uncertainly.

Together, Emma and I informed Sam that I was fine. Then the lights came back on for good. It was a good thing that Sam had already turned back to his office or else he might have seen the hand that was poking out of the partly open stock room door.

I gasped, covering my mouth with a hand like I was trying to hold my own life in. "Sookie, wait there for a second!" Emma put her hands up in front of me like she'd done to Sam.

Collecting myself, I gave Emma her second and then a few more before pushing through the stock room door. Emma had moved the body away from the door some but I still caught the door on its ribs. My ribs!

The body Emma was arranging on the floor was mine. She'd flipped it, me, onto my back but my arms and legs were still all akimbo so it was clear I hadn't fallen especially gracefully. My head was lolled to one side like I was deep asleep. Or dead. "Am I dead?" Okay, probably a stupid question, but just you wait until the day you see your own body sprawled out on a stock room floor and see what kind of wit you produce.

"No," Emma said, sounding both calmer and more annoyed than she had in the hallway. "You met my brother."

I gathered myself together enough to remember that that was going to be _my_ opening line when I saw her. "Yes. I did."

"And somehow the bastard managed to unstick you from your skin," she guessed. "And then didn't stick you back in properly so I scared you right out again."

"You _scared_ me out of my skin?" Was that something that happened to people?

"Yeah. Sorry."

I looked down at my hands, the ones attached to me, not the ones splayed out on the ground. Yep, that was definitely me glowing in the dark like I'd just drunk my weight in vampire blood. "So, I'm Walking right now." I could handle that. I'd already done it after all.

"Sort of."

Emma was still putting my limbs in order. I thought about offering to help but then remembered that I wouldn't be able to touch anything anyway. Plus, the whole thing was putting me in mind of a mortician arranging a body for a funeral. Yuck.

"You're not a Walker," Emma said, looking up from her work with satisfaction. I was definitely going to have bruises on one shoulder and maybe a cheek where I'd hit the ground. I hoped I didn't have a concussion. "You've strayed." Was that _Strayed_? Was it some kind of technical term?

"Now what?"

"Lay down." Emma got to her feet and waved at my body.

_That's easy enough_, I thought, remembering how Jack had laid down right on and in Eric's body. I stepped up to my body, my feet sort of sticking when I stepped onto my own ankles. I lowered myself to the ground, feeling like I was sitting in semi-solid Jello. Then I leaned back and … ow, ow, ow. I opened my eyes.

My head felt heavy and I was definitely going to be bruised on my shoulder and my hip. There was a stringent, coppery taste in my mouth. I had bitten the inside of my cheek when I fell.

Emma was shaking her head when I sat up. She said something under her breath that sounded like, "Asshole."

I worked my sore jaw. "How do I _not_ do that again?"

"Your spirit needs to stay in your body long enough to heal. It's not made to come out like that. I don't know how you did it in the first place."

"I grabbed Jack's ankle."

Emma looked at me like I might very well be concussed. "Wait here," she said. So I sat on the floor and took full inventory of my injuries. After receiving wounds from vampires, Weres, and fairies, it's impressive to see just how much damage an old-fashioned concrete floor can do.

When she came back, Emma had a spool of string, the plug-in air freshener from the women's bathroom, two shot glasses, and a bottle of scotch. "Where'd you get the string?"

"Sam had it in his desk." Emma shrugged as if to say, who knows why. "It's a good thing too or we'd have to use your shoe laces."

"For what?"

"To bind your spirit."

Emma poured scotch into the shot glasses and put the air freshener between them. "Is this going to work?" I asked, not knowing what 'this' entailed.

"Maybe," Emma said. "It's not magic I'm very familiar with and we should have some food and actual incense as offerings. And the contemporary ceremony isn't used for exactly this purpose, but it's similar. Maybe it started out this way and changed over time." Emma's brow wrinkled like she was trying to remember.

Okay. "What is it used for, then?"

"Binding spirits," Emma assured me. That was at least one point in our favor. "This is a Baci." She held up a length of string. "In the old belief system in Laos, every person has several spirits. The spirits often wander and must be called back and bound to the person for important moments in the person's life, like marriage, childbirth, illness or a journey. The offerings entice the spirits to come back, the string binds them."

I guess it was a good thing that my spirit was already back, since our offerings were pretty pitiful. If only it would stay put. "Let's do it, I guess."

I sat and Emma opened my hands so they were palm up. She stroked my right hand, fingertips to heel, then heel to fingertips. "I spoke Pali once, I think but … I wish you good health and good luck. I wish you a happy and healthy family. I wish you love and joy and peace. I wish you good fortune in all your ventures." Emma shrugged like she didn't really know what came next. "If you journey far, I wish you a quick and safe return." She tied the string around my wrist like a thin bracelet and repeated the procedure on my other wrist.

"I don't feel any different."

Emma shrugged again. "I guess we'll only know if it doesn't work."

"Fantastic."

Emma ignored my sarcasm. "Keep them on for at least three days." She handed me the spool of string. "The more people you can get to bless you, the better."

"How're we going to explain that?"

Emma thought for a moment. "We could tell them you're pregnant and it's good luck for the baby. People will believe the strangest superstitions about babies."

"No." Just what I needed, rumors of a vampire baby.

We settled on telling people that I had visited Emma's family recently and the strings were part of a traditional ceremony in their culture. I was supposed to get people from my own home to participate to bring the Asli family's luck into my life.

"Laos, huh?" Hoyt said, and obligingly tied a piece of string around my wrist (his blessing had been: "Uh, well, best of luck, Sookie.").

"Yep." Emma and I had decided her nonexistent family was from Laos since it was accurate for the string tying and no one from Bon Temps was likely to be an expert enough to recognize that Emma's look had some Lao in it (it had some of everything after all) but was definitely not wholly Lao. "They've been in America since before Emma was born though. They live out past Shreveport." That was as complicated as I was determined to make the cover story. It had been working well enough. I'd acquired a half-dozen new strings. One set was from Sam who'd given a really sweet and heartfelt blessing, though he definitely didn't buy the cover.

Terry Bellefleur tied on a set of strings when he came in for lunch. "Didn't know 'Asli' was Lao," he said with downcast eyes. Terry, a Vietnam vet and a man familiar with southeast Asia, might have contested our story but he just gave a watery smile and said his blessing silently, nodding when he'd finished.

Jason grinned and gave me a big hug. His blessing borrowed from the 'Our Father' here and there but it was altogether much more eloquent and genuine than I would have expected from him. Bud Dearborn wished me happiness (and to stay out of trouble). Maxine Fortenberry wished me a pack of fat children. Even Jane Bodehouse dug up a crooked smile for me, though I had to help her tie the knots

I left Merlotte's that day with shaggy cuffs of string bracelets and a kind of feeling of peace. Whether all the string tying had done a lick of good I couldn't really know but there was something kind of nice about the people I saw everyday wishing me good things. Even if it caused their minds to remark that I certainly was a bit strange.

Emma was waiting for me in the parking lot. With the Straying and the spirit binding and all, we'd run out of time to talk. "So … my house? It's closer."

Should I have been wary of Emma? Maybe. But as far I as could tell she wasn't especially threatening to me. The worst she could do was stop my telepathy for a little while and I'd be hard pressed any day of the week to say why that'd be a bad thing. Other than that, she was human. She was an athletically built woman, sure, but I'd had Eric's blood not that long ago and had been in a few fights in my day.

Emma's house turned out to be on Sweet Clover Drive which was off 5th Avenue, near the post office. She must have had some kind of savings before coming to Bon Temps, because, while the house was even more modest than mine, it was a house. You couldn't exactly afford a house on tips from Merlotte's. The front yard was small and neat like the house inside. It was the backyard that was something else.

Emma offered me tea and sandwiches, which I accepted, before leading me out to the back patio. There was a set of cast iron chairs with pale cushions next to a matched table with a sun umbrella in the middle. The patio was a poured, eight-by-eight square of concrete. Where the patio ended, the world bloomed.

"You've got a green thumb," I said in appreciation of the wild tangle of blooming bushes and flowering plants. There were no rows in Emma's garden, no neat, landscaped lines, just deep blues, exotic pinks, and shocking oranges. It looked more like she'd tossed a bunch of seeds into the wind and they'd all come up at once.

"Yeah," Emma smiled fondly. "I really wanted a garden so Sam and Terry broke the sod up for me right after I started working at Merlotte's.

I smiled. That sounded just like Sam.

"So, I guess you want to talk about Jack?"

We sat opposite one another in the chairs that were all twisting metal vines and unfurling iron leaves. "He's been sticking his nose in where he shouldn't."

Emma gave me a tight smile. "I'm not surprised. Jack's been around for a thousand years, longer I think, and as far as I can remember, he's always had some, um, boundary issues."

I sipped my tea. "As far as you can remember?"

"I'm not very old. Jack says that we should stay apart until I've been myself, been Emma, for a while. He says it's harder for us to keep our own identities when we're together. We kind of get sucked into the Density … what we are … Eric told you about what I am right?"

"He told me."

"Yeah, well, Jack says if I don't spend a lot of time as me, I might get lost in _It_ if we're too close to each other. So I've never actually met him in the flesh, just when he's out Walking. And being apart from him, and from _It_, makes it kind of hard for me to remember all the women I used to be. They're all in there somewhere. But, I don't know, I'm just me." Emma looked out at her garden, uncertainty on her face.

I thought I was starting to get why Jack had dwelt on his sister being so young. As much as they looked like twins, they were very different people. When I touched her mind I could see that she missed him, the man who wasn't truly her brother, but something to her for which we didn't have a word. They were two of a kind. And more than that, in a way, they were the only two of a kind.

"Emma, Jack told me some things. Things that are important. Things about me and about Eric," I had a feeling I was walking on dangerous ground. "I need to know if I can trust him."

Emma's face was the one I wore when people said nasty things about Jason. I understood. Jason was all I had too. "He's my brother, Sookie. I love him."

I stopped myself from pointing out that that hadn't been the question. "It could mean Eric's life."

I knew Emma remembered Jeyne and what she'd done. I probably should have felt worse than I did about playing the guilt card. But the veracity of Jack's story really could mean Eric's life or his death.

Emma drew a shuddering breath. She shook her head at the question, and at herself for answering it. "You can't trust him," she said, and I felt sadness roll off of her like it had been she and I who'd exchanged blood. "He lies." She swallowed back tears. "He lies, and he's treacherous, and he had me killed."


	18. Chapter 18

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**CHAPTER 18**

An hour ago the sun had broken through the clouds to cast a watery light on the world. In the time since, the water had gone and the sun had remained, dutifully reminding all and sundry that a Louisiana springtime sun can burn hotter than most place's summer suns. Shafts of light pierced the canopy of tree branches that overhung Emma's patio. Butterflies flitted in and out of the streams of light, though our voices had scared the hummingbirds off. All in all, with beaded glasses of sweet tea and the big sun umbrella, we've must looked like a quaint postcard of southern living.

The effect would definitely be ruined if our conversation was added in captions.

"He had you _killed?_" It was a measure if how much I've grown that every drop of my tea stayed in my mouth. Though, I'd like to note that, as a hostess, if you plan to bring up murder in conversation, if might be better not to serve liquid. Or anything that can be choked upon. "Why?"

Emma blinked and then she was my calm co-worker once again, as if my own horrified reaction filled the quota of necessary emotional response. "Not me exactly. Jeyne."

I nodded. "She was dangerous," I said, in decent imitation of Eric.

Emma took up my role, arguing, "She was insane." She took a bite of her sandwich, eyes rolling up as she used the chewing time to formulate a response. "Our history is ... long. For the beginning of it, we lived alongside our children and grandchildren and so on with no troubles but the troubles that arise for a race of warm-blooded animals trying to scratch out a place in the world. Even then, life was dangerous. We died from illness, disaster, starvation. She died in childbirth. He died in skirmishes over land or leadership.

"Then, something happened. Other creatures appeared. They seemed to have been formed from the same stuff as man ... but with some things added and others taken away. They were the first of the supernaturals. We had always ... well, made ripples in mankind. We _influenced_ them. But ... these new beings ... we changed them altogether. And they became frightened." Emma's smile was small and sad. She reached out a hand tentatively, and, when I didn't draw back, she touched my fingers.

The images hit me like the wave you don't see coming. In faded technicolor, I saw Emma and Jack, She and He, running through a forest of ancient sentinel trees. The trees were immensities, dark towering things that reached up toward heaven and yawned as time passed by. Sunlight had to travel so far through their branches that it looked old by the time it reached the dusky forest floor. I knew this forest. It was the one that lived in my imagination when Gran read to me from the brother's Grimm, in was the one written on my genes from the time before sawmills and civilizations. Behind the man and woman, a horde of men came shrieking, running in great, loping strides, bearing chipped stone knives and things deadlier yet under their skins.

Then came images of the woman, eyes wide with fear, as a wild haired female with glistening canines snapped her neck. Next they, He and She, burned alive in a crude wooden shelter. Then He was tossed from a cliff to the sea and the rocks below. His assailant watched on with eyes greedy for untasted blood. Hands wrapped around Her neck in a room with stone walls. She looked down at a bullet wound that bloomed blood and death. She huddled in a room, a living pile of filthy rags, and a gleaming axe-head shivered as it found purchase in her neck.

Over all the images rang Emma's thoughts, urging the people to run faster and blistering the assailants with curses. These were not frozen memories I watched, I could not pull them out for detached inspection like Jack did. I watched Emma's thoughts of her own memories and they were colored by sadness and fear.

"It's the same every time. When someone discovers that we're dangerous or desirable, the wrong somebody, we have to run. Sometimes they catch us anyway. That's why we ..... The first time Jack came to me, when I was first born as Emma, he got down on one knee and promised to protect me. It made me feel so safe. But then, later, I remembered that it was the same promise he made to Jeyne. But he still asked Niall Brigant to kill her."

I had been wondering how my great grandfather fit in. "So," I said, deciding I'd have to let go of the illusions of what I wanted to be Niall's motives. "Niall wasn't rescuing Eric. Even though he was innocent."

Emma smiled gently. "Sookie, Eric Northman has had a thousand years to build up a list of things you don't know about him. He will never be innocent in the eyes of a fairy. Especially not one as old as Niall." She let me sit with that while she went to bring us more tea.

When my own personal voice of the Discovery channel returned, she asked, "What do you know about the fairy wars?" I realized that Emma sounded older than she looked and she looked older than she was. I wondered if remembering did that to her.

I shrugged. I knew what I knew from a few ominous words from Eric that served only to convince me that I never wanted to see one of those wars. He'd neglected to sit me down for a history lesson. "Just that the vampires fought the fairies and it was awful. A lot of people died on both sides."

Emma nodded. "The wars were terrible things. But the last one ... it ended in what is known as the Holocaust of the Ancients. The last war was different from the others. Until it happened, a thousand years ago, the vampires had always been at a disadvantage. They were a new race compared to the fairies and they didn't have the strength or numbers to pose a real threat.

"But, in those days, magic was very strong in the world, the strongest it's ever been. The fairies had an array of great Elders, princes and princesses. There were many vampires alive who could trace their lineage, in a step or two, to the first maker. The vampire ancients desired fairy blood and access to Faerie itself. Humans had finally developed enough to be a real danger to the vampires and they wanted to use Faerie as a retreat from bands of vampire hunters."

I was trying to fit everything she said into my brain and examine it at the same time. I thought of the Ancient Pythoness and the time of Eric's turning. It was too much. At least Emma's own thoughts were mercifully silent.

"The vampire ancients called their children and those children called their children, until nearly all the vampires of the world were assembled into an army like the world had never seen. When they attacked, the fairies disappeared into their own lands and set up wards behind them. But the fairies hadn't learned to despise humans yet and many human cities were their friends and allies. The vampire army fell on those cities, slaughtering the humans and forcing the fairies to intervene. But even then, the fairies and humans found themselves facing impossible numbers. Young, talented vampires replaced the old ones that fell. They never stopped coming."

Emma's dark eyes were sad and angry. "We try to let the world's affairs progress as they will. But Jack and Jeyne fought in that war. Jeyne was a very gifted Walker. Many fairies and the leaders of men invited her into their souls to restore their peace of mind. Watching many of those souls get slaughtered undid her."

I wondered if the death of a soul looked anything like a supernova.

"Vampire casualties were heavy, too. Some ancients lost dozens of children. One, a vampire who'd been in the legions when Rome was young, lost every child he'd made."

I knew that one. "Occella."

"Was that his name? I'd forgotten. This Occella cut his losses and left the war halfway through, returning only when victory seemed more certain. When he returned, it was for the last battle of the war. He brought a single child with him. The child was very young, a few decades old maybe, but he .... One warrior should not make the difference between victory and defeat. But Occella's child was the vampires' Achilles. He slew two fae princes that day and wounded a third so grievously that the prince did not survive the machinations of his own kind for long. But it was said that Occella kept such a tight hold of this child that he did not taste one drop of fairy blood."

I shuddered with pain, real or imagined, thinking first of the grip the legionnaire had had on Eric and then of the fairies Eric had killed. I shuddered again when I realized that this was probably backwards.

"So many of the fairy elders died that day, so many were slaughtered on the field, that they have never recovered in numbers or power. They learned to hate humans for the weakness we inspired in them. They've closed off their world." Emma looked at her garden like she hoped it might hide a door to Faerie. Maybe it would have once.

"Occella did not permit his child to go to the vampire's feast of victory. So your Viking escaped the fairies' vengeance. But Niall Brigant fought in that war. If it hadn't been for my brother, Niall would not have stopped the fairy twins from exacting their revenge, even if it was for another crime."

"One Eric didn't commit," I reminded her. I told myself I'd always known Eric was a killer. As a young vampire he would have killed without even intending to kill. But my mind liked, when it could, to slip over the fact that Eric enjoyed killing, that he loved few things more than a good fight.

Emma shrugged. _But in the face of so many others? _

"You said Jeyne lost her mind in the war. Is that why Jack ....?"

"Murdered her?" Emma said it with the air of a disappointed mother, I love you but I hate what you've done. "Yes. I guess so. He ...." She shook her head, unable to understand even a thousand years later. "We play all the parts. We are everything that men and women are. I have seen him through illness, blindness, his own madness ... but he ... he wouldn't do it for me. Jeyne went mad, good and lovely Jeyne, who was the elder, who taught him to be what he was, she went mad and he killed her." There were tears in Emma's eyes and on my cheeks. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn that on that evening, all the women in Bon Temps cried. "He's my brother, Sookie, and I'll always love him. But you cannot trust him."

"Don't worry Sookie, I'd never dream that you'd do that." Speak of the Devil and he shall appear. Jack, in all his pearly-bright glory, Walked out of the garden as evening fell. "You've been telling stories about me, sister. Nothing too embarrassing, I hope."

Emma faced her brother with a cool, even look as if she hadn't just been expounding his treachery. "What's the news, brother?"

"You should watch it," he said. "I've been allowed to come here so that I might relay how badly Victor has taken your latest ... response to my imprisonment." His face said he didn't plan to relay any such thing. "I'm sure you know he'll blame the others on you as well."

Emma shrugged. "If someone else wants to make my threats for me that's fine."

"If you push him hard enough, he'll push my head right off my neck."

"And risk us both being young and foolish enough to go after him together?" Emma sat forward, shaking off her guise of calm. "Tell me where you are and I'll end this."

Jack shook his head and grinned. "And deprive Victor of the joy of being my host? You are very cruel, Emma." The grinned suffered when he flexed the fingers of his left hand convulsively. "I must be going, ladies." He actually bowed. "It's a long Walk back to New Orleans and Victor seems to have burning in mind." Jack stepped forward quickly so the table bisected him. He reached out a hand as if to touch his sister's face but, instead, reached right through. Emma closed her eyes and I looked away, aware that I was witnessing something intensely personal. Jack said, "The bastard might keep me from you for a while, sister. But don't worry, I'll get out. I always do."

Then I put up my shields and he was gone. I found that I was crying again. "Sorry," Emma said, when she saw the tears. It was a practiced word, said too many times to mean much anymore.

"Victor has him?" It had never occurred to me to wonder where the Walker's body was. I thought of my own as it had been, sprawled at painful angles on the stock room floor.

"He's had him for a while."

"Why?"

"Why not? They always want to kill us or control us when they realize the myths are true. Jack can Walk into souls, he can rob supes of their abilities. Plus, keeping him captive provides a degree of protection from both of us. At least for a while."

"Because Jack won't let you near him."

Emma nodded. "I didn't even know he was a prisoner for _months_. He didn't tell me. He still won't tell me where Victor's keeping him."

"You did something that made Victor angry," I said, trying to pry without making it too obvious that that was what I was doing.

"Yes. He took my brother, so I took a vampire. Some friends of mine are holding him." She looked into some far away place. "He'll hurt Jack now, if he hasn't already."

"And Victor might think you took the others, Felicia ...." I didn't know what that would mean for Eric.

"He might." Emma turned to face me. "I'll make you deal, Sookie. Jack's told me things about you. You're stronger than you look. You find my brother, you bring him back, and I'll take the blame for those missing vampires. Any of them. All of them."

My eyebrows jumped. It still wouldn't be easy and the real vamp-napper would still be at large but I had freed a vampire's prisoner before and this one wouldn't ignite in the sunlight. "Won't that be dangerous for you?"

"We're very good at running. And if Victor catches us ... we'll just have to face him together." Her grin was as savagely brilliant as her brother's.

I swallowed, sensing that if that happened, I didn't want to be anywhere nearby. "Okay. I'll do it."

"You swear?"

"I swear."


	19. Chapter 19

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**CHAPTER 19**

I'd told Eric I would call Fangtasia when I got off work. I didn't call immediately because the sun was still up and I had a feeling that a message left with the minions wasn't what he had in mind. It became full dark when I was driving from Emma's house to mine. The plan was to collect my thoughts on the drive home, then call Fangtasia from my house and decide what to do next. I had a feeling that Eric wouldn't be thrilled that I'd given my word that I'd find Jack. Or that I intended to keep it.

I guess I should have heard the Lord chuckling down at me and my plans.

"Sookie! Come watch this!" Amelia was perched on the couch in the living room when I came in. She was still dressed in her practical office attire. Which isn't really much different from her regular, everyday attire.

The TV was tuned into a Shreveport news station. But as the newscaster announced a video "from the scene", I saw that the caption identified the location as cross streets in New Orleans. The video had been taken when the sun had dropped down behind the horizon but sunset colors were still streaking the sky. A flare of brighter orange had sprung up in the building across the street. That must be what had gotten the cameraman's attention.

A dark shape ran down the sidewalk in front of the burning building, moving so fast that it was just a man-shaped blur. The camera swung around to focus on the illuminated sign. It read, "Bloody Good Times Bar" and below, in that removable lettering, it said, "Warning: Staff has a drinking problem." It wasn't hard to figure out that it was a vampire bar.

The runner from the sidewalk scaled the signpost with ease. Once on top, he ripped the sign from its mooring and tossed it to the street in a shower of sparks. I sat down next to Amelia and wondered out loud why a vampire would attack a vampire-owned establishment and be so obvious about it. But then the vandal graced us with a close up.

He was a study done in brown. Brown hair receding from a rounded sun-brown face, brown eyes, and brown stains on the teeth he flashed at the camera. "If you won't come to the sun, the sun'll come to you," he said, and the camera panned down to show a t-shirt that had, "The Sun" printed in block letters.

"He's not a vampire," Amelia said, sounding as stunned as I felt.

Before we had time to wonder if it was an isolated incident, another roll of footage showed a similarly nondescript man drive his fist repeatedly through the hood of a car whose tags read, "VMPLUVR." We watched a half dozen videos of vampire property being destroyed before the newscaster informed the public that these were only some of the images from "several violent acts of vandalism that occurred at sundown."

"Maybe you should—" Amelia began, but I was already fumbling though my purse and using all Gran's replacement curse words as I tried to find my cell phone. When I finally found it, I dialed Eric's number, noting that some part of my brain that lit up when death and destruction were on the table had memorized it.

"Sookie," he said abruptly enough to fit the situation. Though his tone was anything but soothing, my spine went slack with relief. One video had shown an all-night grocery store burnt to the ground.

"You're alright," I said, more to myself than to him.

"I'm always alright, my lover," he said, sounding more like himself. "You were worried for me?"

Saying, "I'm always worried for you," wouldn't have been an especially good comeback, so I settled for, "Yes." I hoped my tone made it clear that if I could smack him upside his head over the phone his skull would be ringing right now. It was just like him to sound pleased that I'd been worried.

"Fangtasia was not hit."

"You don't sound like you think that's a good thing." It'd been difficult to discern his tone of voice. The truth is, I was embarrassingly glad just to hear him talk.

It is good. But very few vampire-owned establishments were spared. Not doubt it will look ...."

"Suspicious."

"Exactly."

"We need to talk." I was about to ask if he could get away but then I had a flash of the grinning brown-toothed man and the ruined car. I'd rather Eric not drive his car with its rather conspicuous vanity plates even if Fangtasia had been overlooked. "I'll be there in an hour."

"The damage in area five was only petty vandalism, I've already got people out searching for the culprits. The worst of the damage was to some of the bars in New Orleans."

Of course. That would make my case for going to New Orleans so much _easier_. "These 'culprits'... they looked dangerous."

"Humans," Eric said dismissively.

"That's what I mean."

There was silence on the other end of the line.

"I'll see you in an hour."

When I got to Fangtasia the line was running a little differently than usual. A beefy, decidedly human male I'd never seen was taking money a few feet ahead of Pam who was casting a steely eye over all who entered. I guess this was how Fangtasia did tighter security. Instead of being distracted by cash and fake IDs, Pam could just focus on being terrifying.

"No charge for you, ma'am," the side of beef said when I brandished ID and cover charge. He hadn't even glanced at my driver's license.

"What?"

"No charge," he repeated a little louder and smiled. "For you. Ma'am." He dipped his head.

I looked between him and Pam in horror. Pam looked like the cat that ate the canary. "I don't know why you look so upset," Pam said when I crossed the distance between us. "I made it clear that he was not to call you 'Mistress.'"

"Call me ... Pam! Are you serious?"

"Completely. Our minions take their devotion to Eric very seriously." Pam had lost her battle for a straight face. I hoped she'd be able to refrain from slapping her knee.

I entered Fangtasia in a huff, with quite a few words to say about Eric and fangbangers under my breath. I forgot all of them when I actually saw Eric, of course. He was parked, as per usual, in the center of the bar like a beautiful statue brooding on the centuries that'd passed him by. I had to remind myself that it would not be good for his business or my self image if I ran across the room and threw myself at him.

Well, it would give the few tourists who had braved the bar after the recent attacks quite a show. So maybe his business wouldn't actually suffer. My self image was another matter altogether. Plus, we were on the outs and I was here under some kind of blood-bond compulsion.

On the out. On the outs.

It would be my 'Om' this evening.

Eric stood when he caught sight of me which was enough of a show for quite a few patrons present. I picked up a few perfectly tame thoughts of tourists' appreciation but those were pretty much overwhelmed, as always, by lusty images from the fangbanger contingent.

When I crossed the room, aware the whole time that a good portion of the patrons were staring at me (something I wonder if I'll ever get used to), Eric gestured to his office.

I shook my head. "Let's talk out here for a minute." I seated myself before he offered me a chair. With all of the excitement of the past few days, I didn't exactly trust myself with him, alone in a confined space. Not that I ever really trusted myself with him in a confined space and don't get me started on alone.

"Then how am I to greet you properly, lover?" Eric was thoroughly in 'convince Victor' character. Which wasn't all that different from real Eric so I wasn't about to start nominating him for any Oscars just yet. When I still didn't rise, he said, fangs run out, "I didn't ask you here to hear about your day." I had a feeling he was about to go into full Viking rape and pillage mode and I wouldn't put it past him at all to put me over his shoulder and haul me bodily from the bar floor. Anger and brushes with final death seemed to do this to vampires. They took survivor's lust to a whole new extreme. At least in my experience. And Eric did have quite a few dangerous people who may or may not want him dead.

"Fine." My resentment wasn't all show. I didn't need to set a precedent of doing things his way tonight or I'd end up crushed under the resulting snowball like a Looney Tunes villain. I stomped off toward Eric's office. Stomping is no easy thing if you're wearing a shoe with any kind of heel. You really have to want to make a point to even attempt it.

I retreated immediately to the far end of Eric's office once inside, making use of all the space offered. Dear Abby would probably advise me to rethink my relationship if my guy made me feel the need to put barriers of furniture between us when we were alone in a room. Though when I explained to Abby that it was more about controlling hormones tripping on the acid that is a blood bond than personal safety, maybe she'd relent.

Eric's office door was on one of those spring systems that drew it slowly to a close. While the door made its silent progression toward its frame, Eric looked at me. You couldn't really say I'd primped but if I'd showed up at Fangtasia in my Merlotte's uniform looking seven shades of worried, someone might have noticed something was up. So I wasn't dressed to the nines but my jeans were snug, my heels were unnecessary, and my shirt was scarlet.

Okay, yeah, I might as well be dressed as a matador with a dangling scarf. Guilty. Only I was a big fan of survivor's lust too and guilt wasn't what I was feeling at all.

With very deliberate slowness, Eric reached back and locked the door. Then he kissed me. There are kisses and there are kisses. This was a kiss that began with the locking of the door. It included all the deliberate steps he took to get to me. It included his eyes on mine, telling me I was about to be kissed.

I noted part way through the kiss that though the heels weren't _entirely_ unnecessary, they made it easier to reach him. And that _was_ necessary. His cool mouth pressed against my hot one, his tongue playfully counting my teeth. My top was cut low, displaying mother nature's kindness to me like blue ribbon state fair produce. Eric didn't need to tear the thread that held the top button in place, the button was just for show, but he did anyway.

Just as I was really starting to enjoy the forays his hands were making under my neckline and starting to forget the laundry list of things that had to be discussed, Eric took me by the hips and turned me away from him. A protest was working its way up my throat when he scraped his fangs from ear to collarbones and slid the sleeves of that red top over my shoulders, taking the straps of my bra with them and turning the protest into something that sounded much more inviting. He didn't bother with my bra any further, just brought each of my breasts out for inspection, weighing them in big, pale hands.

A satisfied rumble in his chest shivered through my shoulder blades like warning tremors and I leaned against him, tilting my head back for a kiss. But Eric just looked down at me with a wicked grin and withheld his mouth, bending only so far as to plant a sly kiss on my forehead. I turned my head in to nip at his neck in frustration. Which he loved. The frustration and the biting in equal measures. In reward or retaliation he expertly popped the button on my snug jeans and eased the zipper down so slowly that I reached between us to give him a few squeezes so he'd know just how much I didn't appreciate the wait.

His grin grew positively devilish at my sharp intake of breath when his wandering fingers finally made contact. He had hands made for a grand piano but had decided to learn women instead. I was not about to correct the mistake. His rhythm was superb and he never neglected the high notes.

Eric has a major thing for eye contact. I've never checked but I wouldn't be at all surprised if he kisses with his eyes open. Now I found him looking down at me every time I turned my face up for a kiss. But I never got that kiss. He continued to withhold his mouth, watching me struggle against him and toward release. When the sensations building in my belly got to be too great and my eyes slipped away, he'd drop his head and kiss my temple or my ear until I turned my face back up and he'd pulled away. "Not fair." I leaned my head against my own arms, wrapped around his neck now for support.

There might have been a knock at the door soon after because Eric said, "Just a moment, I think," in a voice that was far too even. But by then my head had gone a little loose and was tipping back and forth on its axis like a ship adrift in a storm. "Eric," I said in a helplessly thready voice and two of those piano fingers slipped in mercifully to find a high B-flat while he bent his head past my waiting lips and craning neck to bite just inside the slope of a breast, finishing me off with the purest of pleasure-pain.

High B-flat, yep, whoever was outside the door was definitely treated to a high B-flat. I came down from my climax already thinking about the best way to kill Eric for that.

"What's this, lover?" Eric grasped a wrist that had been locked behind his neck and inspected the shaggy cuff of strings.

"Oh, I Strayed." If we bothered removing any substantial amount of clothing he would have seen the bruises. Another knock sounded before I could explain and I quickly tucked all of my parts back where they belonged and patted my disheveled hair into some semblance of place. "On the outs," I said under my breath which made no difference to Eric's ability to hear.

He laughed. "You felt compelled, I'm sure." Eric's eyes roamed to the bite mark on my breast framed by the scalloped edges of my top and a wave of that big lust did its best to knock me flat. If I hadn't been feeling compelled before, I was now. "Snap out of it," I said to one or both of us.

Eric shook himself and just like that the atmosphere seemed to change. The bond said business. There were games afoot and Eric meant to be a step ahead.

Even hastily smoothed out and put back together, I must have looked a happy mess when Eric unlocked the door and Pam and a vampire I didn't know filed in. A few paces behind them came Bill and I wondered if Eric's destruction of my shirt that left his fang marks exposed hadn't been part of another power play. I glared daggers at the Viking but seeing as my heart rate hadn't yet settled into a normal rhythm, it was hard to keep up even the mildest show of annoyance.

I tried to control a blush and tried even harder not to imagine that Bill was sniffing the air. Though, since Bill had let me know more than once that he could smell other men that I'd hugged on me, it was pretty much in the bag that he'd know which parts of Eric had just gotten down and dirty with which parts of me. I needed to date men with duller senses and fewer hierarchical allegiances.

I laid out all I had learned from Emma for Eric, Pam, Bill and the vampire I didn't know, Alan. "So you've agreed to find the male for the female in exchange for a plea of guilt," Alan clarified. He had light hair and a handsome face.

I nodded. "That's the idea."

"I've been watching Law and Order, the one about the rapists, I don't think this is how plea bargains usually work." Pam.

"The male said he'd be returning to Victor in New Orleans?" Bill ignored Pam entirely. "But you're certain he doesn't want the female to find him."

"Jack doesn't seem to think they should be around each other." The vampires all nodded seeming, as always, to know more on the subject than I did.

"The Terror of Timbuktu," Alan said. With a straight face, I might add.

"The Holocaust of the Ancients," Eric offered. They nodded gravely and looked old and wise and then nodded some more until I started tapping my foot and rolling my eyes in annoyance.

"So he's not in New Orleans," Bill said and Eric nodded his agreement. "If he'd rather remain Victor's captive than risk being to close to his sister; he wouldn't just give up even an approximate location like that."

"Siegfried and Roy," I said. "Neat."

Eric grinned while the others looked lost. In the humor department at least, he did always know to zig when I zagged.

That conversation led to more conversation and to a argument or two, the sum total of which led me to an Anubis Air flight bound for Las Vegas. After much debate, it was agreed that New Orleans was probably a red herring, and that, if Victor was holding Jack Walker, Felipe would be in the loop. Eric thought Felipe was hands-on enough that Vegas would be our best bet.

Helping to decide the location to begin the hunt was the fact that Eric had been summoned to Felipe's court shortly after the attacks in Louisiana. He'd waited until there was an audience assembled to tell me this, of course, so I made less of a scene than you might imagine. Which was the point. The Viking cannot abide distraught females. Though, frankly, I was more pissed off than angry. Eric obviously didn't have anything to do with super speedy humans who were towing the Fellowship's party line so it was clearer than ever that the Nevada vamps were manipulating the situation to their advantage.

As far as the aforementioned super speedy humans went, Eric had assigned a detail of vamps to investigate but he admitted that he'd never encountered anything like the humans on TV in all his long years of life. So, for now, it was a waiting game. Waiting for something to come up or waiting for the next attack.

There were more battles to fight closer to the home front. Eric hadn't actually been summoned to trial. Maybe it was supposed to be a surprise. Maybe Felipe would give Eric the grand tour of his casino and when they entered the ballroom he'd say, "And what have we here? The A of P and a nasty looking stake! How ever did they get here?"

Okay, so maybe the dark twistiness of vampire politics was starting to wear on me. Wasn't this exactly why I'd avoided getting involved with Eric in the first place? To prevent myself from being bundled off onto planes for the undead, headed for the unknown?

Las Vegas was about the last place I wanted to be going. Felipe de Castro, handsome and charming as he was, was the most recent in a disturbingly long line of vampires that wanted to take me away from home and use me to serve their ends. Being pledged to Eric had kept me in Bon Temps thus far and now I was flying right into the lion's mouth. The only comfort I could take was that the two vampires stowed in the cargo hold wanted me in Nevada even less than I did. Bill and Eric had gone back and forth, fighting with me and each other about my going to Las Vegas. In the end I reminded them that it was my good name on the line with the Mother of Mankind and they'd just have to deal with it.

I only hoped I could.

I'd thought, after the fairy war, that things might be calm for a little while. I hadn't hoped for normal. Normal had long since fled my vocabulary. But calm would have been nice and safe even better. I leaned back against the deep maroon fabric of the seat. I was the only living person on the charter flight who wasn't actually flying the plane. When we hit a patch of clouds, I held own hand through the turbulence.

I thought of Sam who'd given me time off from work, last minute, without asking too many questions. But in his head he'd thought I might as well quit my day job and accept that I worked for Eric. Then he thought bitterly about my reluctance to get involved with my boss and how that had gone out the window. It reminded me why I've always tried to block out Sam's thoughts. They have the ability to hurt me more than almost anyone else's.

Emma had offered to cover as many of my shifts as possible which Sam had definitely appreciated. Emma was doing well at Merlotte's. She'd even acquired a little contingent of regulars that asked to sit in her section. They were mostly young guys from the town that had always been scared of me, the pill-popping older man who must have moved into the area since he'd been around pretty often, and Jane Bodehouse. Emma had a way with Jane which wasn't all that surprising, now that I thought of it, since she'd seen her brother through worse than alcoholism and been worse off herself.

The Weres, on the other hand, seemed to avoid Emma if they could help it.

While I was riding out the turbulence, I ran my fingers over the strings looped about my wrist, wondering which one was Sam's. Which one was Jason's, and Hoyt's, and Terry's? Did the too loose one belong to Jane Bodehouse? Who had tied the one with the elaborate knot? I knew I was wallowing when I started to wonder if I'd Stray now that I was going so far from the people that loved me.

When the turbulence ended, I went to the tiny bathroom and splashed water on my face, resolving to fix my makeup before we landed. Alan and Bobby Burhnam would have gotten to New Orleans already. Pam was holding down the fort at Fangtasia as she'd proved herself more than capable of doing in the past.

_Pam was capable_, I thought, toweling myself off with one of the paper towels provided. So why were we doing this? Why were we walking into almost certain danger? Why were we submitting to a vampire king's agenda? Why didn't we run, disappear into the great, wide world? Surely an ancient vampire and a telepath could make it in the world at large. But would the vampire run? And would the telepath run with him?

I thought of my brother and my friends. I thought of Sam. Of my old house and my old town. Then I thought of Quinn's voice saying, "Eric loves his little piece of Louisiana more than he'll ever love you."

I winced, hating Quinn a little just then for being harsh and cruel and maybe for being right.

Yep. There was the rub.


	20. Chapter 20

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**Note:** If your interested in Jack's part in helping Eric recover his memories, check out "L'espirit de l'escalier" via my profile. It'll give you a sly clue or two for this story as well.

**CHAPTER 20**

I noted glumly that flying into Vegas in the middle of the day was probably not the way to go. I guess there was something exciting to seeing a city appear out of nothing. Desert. Desert. Desert. Then, hello urban sprawl.

The landing was more than a little bumpy. It didn't send me into hysterics _per se,_ but it did a pretty good job at reminding me that I'd just spent a few hours hurtling through the air inside a shell of sheet metal. I was a woman of the world now. The glamour of airplane travel had lost its pizzazz.

A vehicle that looked like the love child of a limo and a hearse met us on the tarmac. Talk about door-to-door service. On the side, in a script that looked ready to grow spider webs was the word 'Sanguine' with the addendum 'Casino and Hotel' underneath in shimmery gold. In addition to the driver there were two other suited people waiting around for little old me. One of them, a middle aged middleman type, greeted me by name and identified himself as "Mr. de Castro's interstate human human-vampire liaison." Did that mean there was a vampire human-vampire liaison?

The Anubis Air guys transferred the travel ready coffins from the plane to the car. I kept my eyes out for would-be abductors. Most Americans go to the airport expecting the hassles of enthusiastic frisking and shoeless shuffling. I go expecting assassins.

As it turned out, there were no assassins present but there were lawyers. Well, one lawyer. She was Tilesha Werner and she had a bunch of papers for me to sign. She was all business in her thoughts but common sense cautioned me against signing anything I hadn't read. I informed common sense that the stack of paper before me was thoroughly daunting. "What is all this?" Maybe I could calm my conscience with the Cliffsnotes version.

"Nondisclosure agreements," Tilesha Werner said. You'd be able to call her pretty if she'd ever allow the word to be uttered in her presence. The woman's hair was bound back so tightly that my own head ached in sympathy. She had lovely dark skin but hadn't bothered with a stitch of makeup. And there was something _punctual _about her voice. That was the only way to describe it. "Three of them. One for you, two for the vampires in your party."

"What am I agreeing not to disclose?" I hadn't heard a word about any of this. I wondered what bearing it might have on Eric's trial or whatever lengthy ceremony Felipe intended to drag us through. I wished Mr. Cataliades was here. Or even Bobby Burnham. Mr. Cataliades was scheduled to head up Eric's defense but he'd be arriving on a later flight. Bobby had gone to New Orleans with Alan.

Felipe's interstate guy, Stephen Vaste, stepped in before the lawyer could explain in her superior staccato. "The Discovery Channel and the BBC will be showing a documentary on American vampires next year. Mr. de Castro has agreed to be the subject of one of the segments." Neat. I know, I know, Felipe was probably involved in some really unpleasant machinations against Eric but it was still ... neat.

Stephen Vaste smiled tightly. "We need all of you to agree to take certain measures of discretion while you are within the grounds of Sanguine or any of Mr. de Castro's other casinos." Right, Felipe owned several Vegas properties. That was going to make finding Jack more difficult. Maybe I could ask for the deluxe grand tour. _Yes, just show me to the torture chambers please. _

"If the film crew approaches you for an interview it must be cleared with me or another member of Mr. de Castro's legal team. Outside of that, we'd prefer if you'd interact with the crew as little as possible." I wondered how many times Tilesha had given that speech. She managed to sound intense and bored at the same time.

"Who else will be featured besides the king, Mr. Vaste?"

The lawyer gave me a sharp look. _How did the vampires survive so long when they insist on disclosing sensitive information to insipid little girls?_

Stephen Vaste looked apologetic. "That's one of the big things we need you not to mention, Miss Stackhouse. The vampire hierarchy has decided it would be best to leave the details of the current system of government out of the documentary. We ask you to forgo all use of royal titles and any mention of knowledge you might have concerning the inner workings of vampire politics."

Oh. "So besides ... Mr. de Castro, who's going to be on the show?"

"Vampires of different ages and from different areas of the world will be featured. The documentary will chronicle their human lives, their turning, their arrival in America, and their current place in American society." The impression I got from him was something like 'Planet Earth' with vampires.

"The networks have asked that you agree not to share information about the scope of the program. If you choose to make public any details about the documentary before the time of broadcast, Discovery and the BBC reserve the right to take legal action against you."

"Got it," I said with my happy hour smile. Maybe I would spend some quality time with the documents before signing. "You need these right away?"

"Oh, I think we can wait until tomorrow morning," Mr. Vaste said congenially.

"But if you decline to sign, you will be asked to find other accommodations for the duration your stay. At your own expense." These two really had the good cop, bad cop thing down.

We stopped and started through the late end of rush hour traffic. The limo-hearse drew quite a few looks from other commuters. They must be wondering if, behind the dark windows, were the results of a wedding gone horribly wrong. Then we turned onto an almost vacant street. "Transylvania," Mr. Vaste announced.

I had my first look at the world renowned Vegas block of clubs and casinos through the beige glaze of a heavily tinted window. An article I'd read in Time said the block had been dubbed "Transylvania" by dispossessed casino tycoons who'd seen their floundering businesses sold off to flourish at vampire hands. Enthusiasts had quickly adopted the name. Time listed Transylvania as one of the top ten vacation spots for the adventure junkie.

The street seemed to be as deeply into daytime trance as its proprietors. Mr. Vaste informed me that, a block over, a street of cafes and boutiques was thriving due to the daytime needs of Transylvania's human patrons. I made a note to check it out when I wasn't busy being cross-examined.

The casinos and hotels that littered the block were all different and all fabulous. Themed and stylized, they all sported flashy facades and healthy flocks of colored lights. I tried to picture the street all lit up in sunset splendor but I was pretty sure my imagination didn't do it justice. Even in the procession of decadent architecture, Sanguine was tough to miss.

As we pulled up the semi-circle drive on the hotel side, I had the distinct impression that it would be much more appropriate to arrive in a carriage driven by a really creepy coachman. Sanguine looked like something transported straight out of a gothic novel. There were narrow windows of thick, bubbly glass, the landscaping was tortured and twisting, the gargoyles were fanged.

I hadn't had much time for research before getting hustled onto the Shreveport-Vegas flight. I don't know what I was expecting from a casino of Felipe's (maybe something more running of the bulls) but it wasn't this.

"I'll show you to your room," Stephen Vaste ('Please, call me Stephen') said, taking control of my luggage with a smile. The lawyer dogged our steps. She wasn't crazy about letting me out of her sight until I'd signed the papers.

Stephen took us up to the seventh floor to what I recognized as a light tight room. "Mr. Northman has insisted that you share accommodations with Mr. Compton. We informed him that security at Sanguine is world class ... but he insisted all the same."

I rolled my eyes, doing my best to look like a woman with an overbearing boyfriend. It wasn't a huge stretch. "At least Bill's better than most of them," I said, and then asked frostily, "And where will _Mr. Northman_ be staying."

"He has been given secure accommodation as befits his station as a prominent businessman and affiliate of Mr. de Castro until the scheduled negotiations have been concluded." Tilesha Werner knew about the trial. Tilesha Werner knew it might end in someone's death. And she didn't care one bit.

I planted my hands on my hips. "And where will this 'secure accommodation' be in relation to my less secure accommodation?"

Stephen looked a little startled. He was used to vampires bringing their besotted humans to Sanguine for a getaway weekend. That I was less than besotted put him out of sorts. "Mr. Northman will be staying on the thirteenth floor. I assure you ... his accommodations are secure against entrance or exit."

So Eric would be upstairs in a glorified cell. Fantastic. At least he'd insisted on keeping Bill and I close to one another. Felipe's minions departed, informing me that there was a dinner scheduled for 'me and my party' in one of the private lounges of the casino at 9 o'clock.

Bill's coffin had been wheeled into the room as I was speaking with Stephen, it occupied an empty space where a sofa probably would have been otherwise. I didn't like to think on the implications of Eric wanting Bill, _Bill_, to stay with me.

Bill would rise in about an hour and then there'd be another hour until dinner. I unpacked my suitcase. Most of the clothes, I had never seen before since Eric had arranged for them while I hastily arranged the rest of my life for an impromptu Vegas getaway. Most of what Eric had bought was high quality business-type attire. But there was one dress ... it might be just the thing for a last dinner before everything went to hell.

OK, maybe I was feeling a little pessimistic.

While I was showering in the luxurious, wood-paneled bathroom I thought I heard a soft click from the room. Bill was awake.

When I exited the bathroom wrapped in a fluffy white robe (undergarments already in place thankyouverymuch) Bill was seated on one of the twin beds, scanning the stacks of documents Tilesha Werner had left. "Did you know about all this?" I said, gesturing with my hairbrush.

"No." Bill didn't look up.

"We're supposed to call Felipe 'Mr. de Castro."

Bill nodded. "They want to work the trial in." Bill held up a release form that I hadn't come across yet in my perusal of the documents. Vampires are fast readers. "They want to film it as a reenactment of old-world vampire justice."

"You're serious?"

Bill had never had much of a sense of humor.

I sat down on the other bed. To say that I was overwhelmed was an understatement. I had seen a few cases of modern vampire justice and they could definitely pass as old-world. "This is a good thing, Sookie." Bill's face was inexpressive. He might believe that, he might not. "There will be a lot of press when the documentary airs. The media may want to interview Eric. It would not be good for the king's interests if Eric were to disappear."

"You mean if they stake him ...."

Bill nodded. "They'll film the trial as if it is not real. Felipe will appear merciful and his debt to Eric will be repaid."

I knew enough about vampire's to know the whole thing was a way for Felipe de Castro to tell Eric he was a pawn to be played with. "Eric's going to be so pissed."

Bill actually smiled.

###

The casino side of Sanguine was a huge, open gallery packed from top to bottom with glitz and games of chance like a summer carnival for grown ups. The floor was full of an odd mix of impeccably dressed aristocrats and gothically attired fangbangers. Vampires studded the crowd like the centers of tiny whirlpools, moving through the press of bodies with liquid grace. I watched it all from the quiet of one of the casino's private lounges.

From the outside, Sanguine looked like a fortress with a tower at each of the four corners. Those towers, it turned out, held ritzy lounges that faced the casino floor with immaculately clean, floor to ceiling windows. Bill and I'd been shown to a third floor lounge so we were looking down at all the action on the floor. I already felt like I was in a movie.

The door we'd come through opened and through it came a small parade of people, headed by Felipe de Castro himself. "Miss Stackhouse," he said smoothly. "It is such a pleasure to meet you again."

"And you, Mr. de Castro," I replied, nodding a greeting.

"By now you will have heard of our little project, I think?" Felipe's silk ensemble was all black tonight. He'd forgone the matador's red but kept the cape. "Don't worry, it will not have any bearing on the outcome of my business with your husband."

I put on my best scowl for Felipe who was clearly testing the waters. "Of course not."

Felipe gave a little bow. "I would like to personally welcome you to my establishment. I hope you stay here will be at least somewhat enjoyable." Felipe smiled and pulled a young man forward from his entourage. "This is Simon Catalano, an old friend of mine. Simon will be happy to show you around Sanguine and answer any questions you might have after our little supper has finished."

Simon smiled and shook my hand. "I've heard a lot about you, Miss Stackhouse," Simon said. And he had. He knew about my telepathy, my relationship to Eric, and even about my rescue of the King. Simon the Spy. At least he was nice to look at. He was one of those uniquely attractive red heads. Call me shallow but I've always thought red hair was something Mother Nature had a hard time getting right. But it worked for Simon.

The door opened again; two beefy vampires who looked more like they'd been geological formations than men before their turning stepped through to flank the door. After them, came Eric.


	21. Chapter 21

**Disclaimer: **See part 21

**CHAPTER 21**

I had to quickly put on my game face which is really similar to my best 'Sookie remains calm even though she's reading some really icky thoughts' face.

"Mr. Northman!" Felipe said with a nod and a dramatic flourish of his cape. I figured the show was probably for the TV people who had all declared themselves (in my head) ready to get their cameras on Eric.

_This one looks just like a Viking._

_Hello, female viewership!_

_I can't believe we're wasting this guy on a reenactment. He's a fucking Viking! _

I had to pinch myself to contain a laugh. It was like they were drooling on my brain.

"Mr. de Castro." I thought Eric's nod probably wasn't as deep as it should have been. Maybe it was in the contract. Or maybe it was just Eric.

Since everyone else was staring at Eric now, I figured it wouldn't hurt my act to join in. No one had told him to dress for dinner (or maybe Felipe just wanted to make sure the BBC folks didn't miss the Viking thing) so he'd come in jeans (complete with barbaric belt buckle) and a black t-shirt. It didn't matter. This was Eric. The rest of us were overdressed.

A waiter was passing through the little crowd. I took a glass of white wine from his tray and hid my relief in a sip. None of the parts of Eric that I could see showed any signs of trauma—no smoking trails from silver chains like I'd feared. I'd spent a good amount of my shower convincing myself that, tied as we were, I'd know if anything really bad happened to Eric. I spent the rest of the shower hoping that Felipe de Castro recalled Sigebert and how I'd gone all Buffy on his ass.

It was probably indicative of how tangled up everything was that when Mr. Cataliades, the half-demon lawyer, followed Eric in a few moments later, I was about equally as glad to see one as the other. With the lawyer there, somehow I felt like things were much closer to a sphere I recognized. Most of the time, vampire affairs were such a tumultuous combination of archaic and bizarre that Felipe de Castro was just as likely to shout, "Off with his head!" over bottled blood and cigars as to give Eric a fair trial. If that happened now, at least there would be Mr. Cataliades to clear his throat and quietly quote the rule book. Or scroll. I bet it's a scroll.

Mr. Cataliades had been laying low, as far as I knew, since the Nevada takeover. It showed in the taut line of his round belly which seemed to have swollen in defiance of the lawyer's need to stay out of the public eye. But he gave me a reassuring wink when he caught my eye and tucked his thumbs under immaculate-as-always lapels. I half expected him to pat Eric encouragingly on the back.

With the arrival of these final guests, the king announced that dinner was about to be served. I like to think that I was keeping up the icy air of an estranged wife very well. Eric was taking the silent as the grave approach though the annoyance I was getting from him via blood bond definitely had some volume. Mr. Cataliades took the seat between Eric and me with the air of a father separating two warring children.

Dinner was a charmingly fake affair. I'm sure the food was excellent but I was thinking too hard about how I'd like to be anywhere else to remind myself to taste it. The vampires present kept their faces as carefully blank as mine while we humans ate and they drank an expensive brand ('vintage') of partially synthetic blood. What the other part was, I didn't know. Maybe Vestal Virgin.

I knew from experience that none of them could be thrilled with so many humans doing something as vulgar as _eating_.

As we ate, the TV people (names and job descriptions were given but I noticed them less than the food) talked excitedly about "the project." They seemed like nothing so much as football coaches giving a pep talk before the big game. Mr. Cataliades interjected a few questions. The demon lawyer politely made it clear that he would need to clarify a couple of points with the BBC and Mr. de Castro before "his clients" would be signing anything. I loved him more than a little right then.

By the time dessert was served I looked down at my lap, against the champagne silk of my dress was my red dinner napkin twisted into a knot. Apparently I had some nervous energy. I felt like the BBC's PR people were doing a great job spinning my life. They fully intended to turn a life or death trial into prime time television.

I've never liked reality TV.

Suddenly dinner was over and handshake and nods were passing all around. "What happens now?" I whispered to the lawyer on my left.

"Eric and I will work with the BBC lawyers to refine a few points of his contract."

I sighed remembering my own pile of forms. I was surprised Tilesha Werner wasn't dogging my heels. "And then?"

"Eric goes to wardrobe."

"Seriously?"

"Mr. de Castro is anxious to begin filming."

"And the trial," I said.

"And the trial," he agreed.

I really hoped there were no other telepaths lurking in Felipe's little dinner party because if there were, they'd be hearing some really choice words from me about the situation. The most appropriate one was 'preposterous' but it definitely wasn't the one I was using most.

I was used to vampires maneuvering me about like a pawn and all that particular chess metaphor entails. But this was different. I'd never felt like I was being so unabashedly messed with. Felipe was blatantly playing with us, and yet the uncertainty of the outcome still loomed.

I think between the two types of situations, I preferred the familiar (if trite) chess type peril. I have the role of plucky pawn down. With this whole documentary-trial thing I felt more like I'd entered a game of Chutes and Ladders. To the death.

The absurdity was astounding.

"I requested a copy of your nondisclosure agreement as well," Mr. Cataliades said, breaking into my thoughts. "I'd advise you to look it over but I believe it is safe to sign."

"Thank you." I glanced past the lawyer to Eric who was so still that he might have been at his customary post in the middle of Fangtasia. "You'll look out for him, won't you?" I said it as quietly as I could. It was a risk since there were plenty of beings present with extremely keen hearing but I couldn't help myself.

Mr. Cataliades and I both laughed at the idea of the rotund lawyer protecting an ancient vampire but the laugh was short lived. "I will, Miss Stackhouse."

The lawyer rose and Eric rose beside him. Neither of them looked at me. As the motley crew of producers, directors, and lawyers led Eric away, the tension that had been mounting in my stomach boiled over. "Wait!" I said before I knew my vocal chords had gone to work.

I was on my feet and had no idea where I was headed. All eyes had snapped to me and I felt the weight of the attention of so many important people on me. No, I realized quickly, that wasn't it. Eric was pressing on me to be silent through the bond like he had never pressed before. I shook my head, confused with my will so under attack. With a groping hand I found the back of my abandoned chair and dragged myself back into it. "I'm sorry," I said, still shaking my head. "It's nothing. Sorry."

The TV men and women smiled awkwardly, nodded to one another and left the room with Eric and Mr. Cataliades in tow. As soon as they were gone, I felt like someone had kindly stopped stepping on my lungs with a combat boot. I rubbed at my throat. I knew Eric still wasn't too far away and while the good part of me knew that he was preoccupied with the current threat to his life, the selfish part of me really wished he'd send some happy thoughts my way. I could really use some rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens right now (though, red silk boxers are far higher on my list of favorite things).

"I see Victor spoke truly," Felipe said. For the time being he was sans entourage and was also occupying Mr. Cataliades' empty chair. Vamps do have a bad habit of sneaking up on we super-sensory deprived humans.

I smiled at the King radiantly. I hate _non sequitor_ beginnings to conversation. What a cheap way to make a girl feel out of the loop. "About what, Mr. de Castro?"

"Your tie to Eric. It is quite strong." Felipe looked at me steadily, clearly waiting to see exactly how I felt about said tie. He was right. I knew it was the bond that had pulled me out of my chair as surely as it had returned me to Merlotte's when Sigebert was attacking.

I didn't know how I felt about that particular revelation.

Well, uncertainty was probably as good as anything in this situation and at least I wouldn't be lying. "Yes."

"Victor also tells me that you are pledged to Eric by the knife."

I had a momentary lapse in sanity and barely restrained myself from saying, "Which knife is that? That little ceremonial dagger? Shouldn't it have a name or something?" But sanity returned to me in time to twist my words into a more useful form, "Yeah. But I ... Eric didn't exactly _tell_ me about the knife. He just told me to give it to him." I didn't have to feign annoyance.

"I see," Felipe said. "Victor was under the impression that you were quite content to be bonded to Eric."

"Things change," I said, a fickle little human girl. "I hope you'll forgive me for saying ... well, I preferred when my life was my own."

Felipe smiled as gently as a vampire can, like an affectionate grandfather who might very well take you out for sundaes and then kill you. "This little show we are doing ... you will see stories about me. Do you know, I was turned as punishment?"

"No. I didn't know that."

"It's true. I lived my human life during the Spanish Inquisition. I was a successful merchant—silks, spices, silver and things like this. When the Church and the Crown took notice of my wealth ... well soon after I was judged guilty of heresy. I spent many days in prison. I thought I would be hanged but the Jesuits had a more certain way of damning my soul."

"They kept a pet vampire?" I asked incredulously.

"Something like that, yes." Felipe smiled again. "But now the men who condemned me are long dead and I am once again a successful businessman. I entertain heads of state from nations around the world every week. Once, I was turned to ensure my damnation, now humans from all walks of life beg me to turn them on a daily basis. Do you see?"

"No, Your ... Mr. de Castro. Not really."

He chuckled almost affectionately and brushed a hand over my hair. "You are bound to Eric Northman now but as you pointed out, things change. Even for vampires."

Felipe stood with the satisfied air of man who has made his point and made it well. "I shall turn you over to Simon's capable hands so you can get acquainted with my casino." Felipe gave a little bow. "Always a pleasure, Miss Stackhouse."

I wished I'd brought a sweater. The room felt colder.

"Ever been to a Vegas casino before?" Simon asked appearing almost as stealthily as his master vanished. He thought that I'd probably never been outside of the town where I'd been born. He thought that was cute.

Unfortunately I didn't exactly have a ton of travel experience to throw back in his teeth. Plus, I was hoping for an excuse to look around. "First time," I said brightly. "Everyone I know is off signing contracts. You have time to show me around now?"

"You are all I have time for." He somehow managed to say it without a trace of innuendo.

Simon took me down in a glass elevator to the casino's main floor. On the way, he explained that construction had started on Sanguine just a few months before the Great Revelation and it held its grand opening just a few days after the vamps went public. "Felipe was doing a little insider trading I guess." The Vampire King had taken quite the risk that America would not only accept but embrace its vampire population.

My tour guide grinned. "Mr. de Castro is a powerful vampire. He knew the date for the public announcement and planned accordingly."

Simon gave me his arm as we made a round of the floor and he told me about the games that were played there. He seemed to know everything about the casino and its glamorous patrons. With his tongue firmly lodged in his cheek, he made it clear that the rich and famous weren't just here for games of chance. He nodded discreetly at a Hollywood starlet who was a closet fangbanger. He bought us into a game of Black Jack with two warring pack leaders, a Senator who was here with someone other than his wife, the errant son of a visiting dignitary, and a tidy, bookish looking woman who'd gotten fabulously wealthy off the sale of fairy blood to vampires. When Simon supplied that tidbit I seriously considered punching her in her bespectacled face.

When I looked up from the game I caught a glimpse or two of Bill. He'd discretely left Felipe's dinner (with his phone to his ear) halfway through, but he was back and keeping an eye on me through the crowd. I winced at the sight of him. Gray as he was, Bill looked more _vampire_ than I'd ever seen him. He was still not wholly well. I felt a rush of gratitude toward him for sticking by me through ... well, everything. Sometimes good emotions are the worst thing. At least for me. When I'm on edge, kindness can make me lose it faster than any amount of tragedy.

I had to fake a coughing fit to have an excuse for eyes shiny with tears. The Senator's mistress kindly supplied me with some water and patted my back.

After a few rounds, we left the table (I might have gotten up a little clumsily and stilettoed the fairy blood lady's foot) and Simon led me over to an impressive bank of slot machine. He whispered quickly to me before shaking hands warmly with a gentleman who I now knew had exchanged a large investment in the casino for a promise that he and his ailing wife would be turned within the year.

I stared at the gentleman with an open mouth when he shook my hand and only managed to mumble something that resembled my name. I hoped he thought my shock was because he was a famous actor (name above the title of the film famous) and not because of the information Simon had supplied.

I didn't know how to feel, let alone what to say. My own horror at the idea of volunteering to be murdered warred with the love the man had for his wife that rolled off his thoughts even now when she wasn't present and we weren't speaking of her. There was a sort of hope for him that seemed to spring just from being here and from talking to Simon. I wondered if Simon had negotiated the investment.

"It was nice to meet you," I finally said after Simon and the actor chatted amicably for several minutes and I contributed nothing to the conversation.

"Likewise."

"So that's the floor," Simon said brightly. "Do you have any questions? Want to play any more games?"

"Do you have, like, really scary, efficient security guards?"

Simon laughed. "You've seen _Ocean's Eleven_." He stopped laughing. "Yes." He grinned again at his own drama.

I hadn't actually been thinking about _Ocean's Eleven_, I'd been thinking about how they heck I was going to execute a search and rescue. "How about the towers, are they all lounges?"

"Two are. Two are executive suites with one-way windows into the casino." He pointed to two turrets whose second and third floors appeared to be huge mirrors. "The rich and famous seem to find one way windows into their bedrooms fascinating."

I made a face. "That's kind of ...."

"Voyeuristic."

"Yeah."

"I can take you through the hotel side if you like. We've got five restaurants over there. Our French and Asian-fusion restaurants are both headed by internationally renowned chefs. There are fitness facilities, a pool, concierge service." He paused quite deliberately. "The dungeons."

"Excuse me?"

"You'll see." He offered me his arm again and we glided through the casino floor. The land of perpetual _carnivale_.

"Dungeons?" I clarified when we took the elevator to the breezeway that connected hotel and casino.

He winked. He mind told me loud and clear that this was his favorite part of the tour and also that he was anxious about something. A door.

I recalled, quite suddenly, the friendly way Steve Newlin had tried to finagle me into the basement prison of his church. Trying to head off panic, I asked Simon to show me to a ladies room before we continued the tour. At the very least, I'd be giving Bill more time to catch up or get reinforcements or something.

_What reinforcements? It's you, Bill, Eric, and Mr. Cataliades. No cavalry to charge over the hill._

I took my time in the bathroom while trying not to make it too obvious that I was stalling.

We took the elevator back down to the ground floor. To my surprise, Bill was already there, sitting with his laptop in the little cafe that abutted the lobby. "Mr. Compton!" Simon said warmly. "I was just giving Miss Stackhouse the grand tour. We're on our way to the dungeons. Do you have any interest in coming along?"

Either Simon did not have a sinister master plan or he was really good at acting like a guy whose sinister master plan had not just been foiled by the presence of a vampire.

"Dungeons? You mean the basement level accommodations?"

Simon's brows drew together for an instant. I picked up mild annoyance from him. He'd wanted to show off the oddity of the rooms as a surprise. "You've done your homework," Simon said, nodding at Bill's laptop.

Simon made a 'follow me' gesture and Bill and I exchanged a look and went along with it. At the end of the elevator bank was a plain, wooden door. Simon unlocked it and pushed it open for us.

Inside was a stone stairwell. You know you're on a whole different playing field when a door opens onto a stone stairwell. "Sanguine, obviously, has a medieval theme. We extended it to the basement." Simon kept the door propped with his foot while he took a length of wood from a rack on the wall. In a few second he had an honest-to-goodness torch burning. "No electricity." He winked.

"The basement level rooms are patterned after medieval dungeons. We've got straw on the floors, communal 'privies,' displays of interrogation instruments. The whole Sha-bang. To enhance the experience, there is no room service."

I laughed. "People actually pay to stay here?"

"People pay more to stay here," Bill answered helpfully. Someone had definitely been on the website.

Simon shrugged as if to say, "Don't blame me for the mysterious choices of the wealthy."

"Wow," I said, taking in the dripping stone hallway that was the basement. "Aren't there zoning laws or something against dungeons?"

"We had to work out some deals." Translation: A few health inspectors had been glamoured and guests had to sign release forms.

"Are there any empty rooms? Can we look?" The ceiling was low and the doors disconcertingly short and mildewed. The fact that many of them sported "do not disturb" signs made me suppress a giggle. I'd seen one that was ajar though and turned in its direction.

"I think this one's better." He waved his hand at the closed door to his left. The torchlight made deep shadows on his face. He gave me a tight smile. _Here we go._


	22. Chapter 22

**Disclaimer: **see part 1

**Note:** For this chap my wonderful promoter and sounding board extraordinaire, did some great beta work in addition to nycsnowbird's always fantastic beta work.

**CHAPTER 22**

The door looked like any of the others but it opened out instead of in. Behind it was another door with a keypad lock. _9-9-7-4-5-2, _said Simon's mind calmly. But before he could put the numbers to use to use, his cell phone spoke its piece. The way my own personal spy calmly checked the phone made me feel slightly better, despite the fact that we were looking at a concealed door while standing in a dungeon. Well, a really good imitation dungeon. Like the Cheese Whiz of dungeons, a genuine dungeon-like product.

I giggled and Bill drew an eyebrow down in concern.

Okay, so I was still a little nervous. I whispered the locking sequence to Bill while it was still fresh in my mind and Simon was distracted.

It was a good thing I did too, because the images that I was suddenly getting from Simon did nothing to calm my nerves. He was imagining a bunch of angry looking people performing some really aggressive vandalism. His imagination seemed to be on fast forward ... or maybe the scene looked too familiar. "Who are the Silver Sisters? And the Sons of the Stake?" I heard the disbelief in my own voice. You find the oddest things in people's heads.

Simon held up a finger, asking for silence. "Do everything you can to delay any acts of vengeance." He gave a nod that the caller couldn't see. "Alright," he said with a note of conclusion. "I'll be in touch."

Simon flipped his phone closed and sighed. It was the only crack in his composure I'd seen yet. I guess if you work for vampires you (as Jason would say) get really good at keeping your shit together. _He's already heard the whole conversation_, Simon thought with a glance at Bill. "The Silver Sisters and the Sons of the Stake are two anti-vampire gangs that started on the west coast but they made it to Vegas pretty quickly." They were termites, his tone said, and he'd lost the number for the Orkin man.

I really need to start putting my head up from time to time and get a better grasp of national events. I guess we have enough of our own problems back in Bon Temps that I hadn't been thinking too much about vampire on-goings in the rest of the country. "You've got your own Fellowship of the Sun?"

"The Fellowship is chartered as a religious institution. It has far greater numbers than the gangs since people can join it openly and legally," Bill said. Of course he would know that. "The gangs are more prone to violent acts and don't associate with any particular religion."

So Vegas had two fledgling Fellowships to deal with, and not the family friendly versions.

"Lots of hate, not much Jesus," Simon added.

"Funny—that sounds _exactly_ like the Fellowship."

Simon shrugged. He didn't share my convictions about the goodness of real Christianity but he also didn't feel strongly enough to argue. "Once you move out of the Bible belt, there's still the hate but less of a need to try to justify it. Vampires over on the coast started joining the Bloods and the Crips a few years back. To put it bluntly, it really freaked people out. Human gangs were bad enough."

"What, did they like the names?" I blurted.

Simon smiled. "The names, the violence ...." He shrugged. "The Sons formed as a result of the threat. The Sisters formed up later."

"The gangs are divided by gender, correct?" Bill asked. I was interested but also eying the door.

"Mostly. Sometimes we call the Sisters the 'Buffys', but, well, they're almost always more vicious than the men."

"What's with the super speedy people?" I asked bluntly. He knew I was telepathic. No reason to play games.

He looked steadily at Bill and then back to me. "We know as much about them as you do about the humans who attacked in your kingdom. Enhanced strength and speed. This wasn't the first attack. We've had several over the past week. The humans are all suspected gang members. Some of them have made suicide attacks, openly picked fights with vampires. It's been hell trying to keep it out of the media."

"Have you caught any of them?" My lack of subtlety was rewarded with images of more double doors, though they didn't all appear to be in the mock dungeon. Most of them looked like regular old hotel room doors.

"Yes," Simon admitted. "But questioning has not gone as smoothly as we'd hoped. We can't detain them very long."

"They'd be treated as missing persons by the police after twenty-four hours," Bill said in response to my confused look. "If several members of anti-vampire gangs suddenly went missing, the law would certainly scrutinize area vampires."

"Right," Simon admitted. "It's a fine line. They won't go to the cops because gang activity is illegal and, as you can see, they're definitely on some kind of drug."

Drug? "They look like they're on vamp blood," I said. "Way too much vamp blood."

This idea had occurred to Felipe's brain trust before. Bill was shaking his head. Simon said, "They can't have taken enough to change like that without actually turning. It's just not possible."

I saw a series of images inside Simon's head. Interrogations. "Some of them died!" The words left my mouth with my breath, they came straight out of my lungs. There was nothing I could do to stop them. I gathered words and breath and forged on. "Some of the men and women you questioned _died_."

"We didn't have anything to do with their deaths, except that they happened here." Simon's eyes flicked left to right. He believed what he was saying but he probably didn't like having to say it in a hotel hallway. Even if it did look like a dungeon. The fact that we weren't bringing the conversation inside had me nervous all over again. "We had autopsies done. All three of them died from massive cardiac arrests."

"That happens with torture," I said icily.

"No torture," Simon maintained. "Two of them died before we even asked any questions. And before you ask, the toxicity reports were clean. No evidence of vampire blood or any other narcotics."

Well, darn it all, there went my Brilliant Idea. "Someone's going to have to figure it out or this is going to get really bad really fast." Simon and I locked eyes. Though we barely knew one another, we effortlessly communicated the same sudden dread of beings that are swiftly being swallowed by a world we used to own. If things continued, it could mean war. The real kind. Not a skirmish between packs or a fight with renegade witches.

I tasted fear, sour and metallic; I felt cold ... then, the briefest of glimpses into Bill's head. I felt a wash of relief and loneliness. His eyes were alien. He would never feel like Simon and I were feeling right now.

Like vampire minds do, Bill's had bubbled up through me, pressing on things, shoving aside parts of me to make room. Then it was gone as if it had budded right off my mind and drifted away to rejoin the vampire. Bill had to notice that I was shaking. "Can we just go in, already?" I asked. At the moment I'd take any kind of distraction.

"Of course." The showmanship had gone out of Simon. He approached the door with the air of a landlord showing an apartment that refuses to sell, one who fumbles with the keys and says, "You might as well take a look."

He dutifully kept his body between us and the keypad but I could hear him repeating the code to himself again. As the pins ground in the electric locking system, I took a step back and bumped shoulders with Bill who was stepping forward to get between me and the door.

The door must have been heavy because Simon pushed it forward with some difficulty. I wasn't foolish enough to believe that we were just taking a tour of the creepy basement. I expected to see something bloodcurdling behind that door—a mass grave, a collection of gang prisoners, a torture chamber built to fit the décor. Hell, part of me even thought Simon might have taken us down here to show off a part of the set for the documentary. Maybe there would be an Inquisition-era prison cell complete with HBO-style grittiness and realism.

The truth is, there was no electricity. So I couldn't really see much of anything. But I could smell it. I put a hand over my mouth and nose to block the stench. I really wished I had a shirt collar to use as an air filter instead of the neckline of this stupid dress.

I heard the soft pops of Bill's fangs and then Simon ushered us inside the room.

There was no way on this side of the promised land that I was going in there. I pressed my hand more firmly to my face, my wrist felt oddly swollen.

Bill took a step forward and I put a hand on his arm to stop him. He turned to me, nostrils flared. "There's only one person in there. A human." There wasn't any real danger, he was saying. My senses all screamed otherwise.

I cast my mind around in panic. I found Simon's thoughts (anxious about the smell spreading) and then another set. The second set was cursing the brightness of the light and that was all.

"I'd prefer if you'd come inside and close the door," Simon said. His face, even in the red torchlight, looked a little green. This was not a smell you got used to.

I took a step forward, praying that I could keep it together. My wrists felt strange, like I was wearing sleeves that were too tight at the cuff. My fingers started tingling and I took another step. When I passed the threshold, Simon closed the door behind me. Inside, the smell was no better. I knew it from memories almost as raw as my own.

Roasting meat and condensed death.

Burning skin and hair.

Every instinct I'd developed since my race crawled up out of primordial ooze screamed at me to run.

Our torches cast a shifting circle of dim illumination on the room. I wondered how people did anything at night before electricity. I could barely see my own feet. As my eyes adjusted I could see a bare cement floor (wise decision, there'd be no getting this smell out of carpet) and then the near end of a cot.

"You have visitors, Mr. Walker."

"Aren't they supposed to stay on the other side of the glass, talk through the phone so I don't grab them as hostages?" The voice came from a dark shape that was slowly coming into focus on the cot. I knew it, of course.

Simon ignored Jack's flippant response. "I'm sure you have questions for Mr. Walker, Miss Stackhouse. I'll leave you to them."

Jack laughed. "There's a champion idea. Go away and leave them in a locked room. I'm sure they'll go for that, Si."

Simon's eyes practically glowed as he rolled them. "He's trying to frighten you because he doesn't want to talk to you."

"Maybe so," Bill replied. "But it is a valid point." I wondered about the door and how much of an obstacle it would be if Bill wanted to get through it.

Simon had something to say about that and Bill had a response but I was too busy thinking to process the retorts. "How and why did I end up here?" I said, raising a hand to signal that the men needed to stop arguing. Now. "What is Felipe trying to pull?"

Simon took a moment to formulate his response. I eavesdropped on all the early attempts. "This is one of our ... domestic terrorists. We've been able to hold him for longer ... because he does not seem to have gang affiliation. Or anyone looking for him, for that matter. Mr. Madden was hoping you'd use your considerable talents to help us with any information Mr. Walker might have."

Now it was my turn to search for a response. Simon really believed what he was saying. He thought Jack was another vampire hater who was on whatever drug the gangs were using. I seized the one part that was sticking out like a warning flag. "Victor? You brought us here on Victor's orders."

"That's right."

"What about Felipe?"

Simon's mind went on a search for the answer and came up dry. "I'm sure Mr. Madden is acting on Mr. de Castro's orders," he said finally.

"He's been glamoured," Bill said. I'd already figured that out.

"But why would Victor tell him to bring us here if not on Felipe's orders?" My mind was hastily supplying possibilities. Most of them were pretty unpleasant. "Felipe will notice if we go missing."

"As will Eric, I think." Not the time for jokes, Bill.

Part of me wanted to wring Simon's freckled neck until he told us how to open the door (there was no knob on the inside). The other part of me rationalized that just because someone wanted me to talk to Jack was no reason to let the opportunity pass. "What do we do with him?" asked my rational side as I jerked my head to indicate a befuddled Simon.

"There is a bathroom," Bill, who had much better night vision, said. And then to Simon, "Wait in there."

Simon didn't protest. He was still assessing the blank spaces in his memory. It must be a real bitch to know all about glamours and not realize you've been glamoured. He shut himself in the bathroom and the light of his torch illuminated a dull orange outline around the closed door. "He can probably still hear everything we say," I pointed out.

"I'll glamour him," Bill said calmly.

I huffed forcefully enough to disturb the flame of my torch. "We're just piñatas to you, aren't we? Whack, whack, whack, and when we burst open the party's over and it's time to get a new one."

"I don't understand. You are upset that he has been glamoured multiple times?"

Okay, so it wasn't a very good metaphor but you try and come up with something better on the spot. And for the record, Bill _did _understand. "Yes."

"It's the best way."

"I know." I looked in the direction Simon had gone. "Can I speak to Jack for a while?" Bill understood what I meant again even though it made even less sense that banishing Simon to the bathroom. He extinguished his torch and went to stand in the darkness beside the bathroom door so I could pretend my conversation was private.

With that settled, I steeled myself and turned toward the cot. "Jack, I'm here to help you," I said to the dark spot on the bed.

"Help me what? I know I'm chained to this sorry excuse for a bed but one of my guards already took me to the bathroom today so I'm all set." His voice was muffled like his face was pressed into the bed. _No need to wipe my ass woman_. "Though I'm sure I'd rather you do it than him."

I sighed, already remembering just how much a girl had to ignore if she wanted to have a civil conversation with the Walker. "I promised Emma I'd get you out."

"I promised Emma I'd get myself out."

"You promised your sister a lot of things."

There was an extra beat of silence from the dark. When he did answer, Jack's voice was less muffled, I thought I could see his eyes glinting in the torchlight. "Go away, Sookie Stackhouse. I'm the hero of this fairy tale. I don't need to be rescued." As an afterthought he added, "And that torch is too bright."

"Fine," I said. I thought I felt a little disbelief roll off him.

"You are easier than I remember." Jack quipped suggestively. "What's next? Are you going to threaten me with the vampire? He won't like the taste of me. Not for long, anyway."

I stepped toward the cot, letting the light from my torch cast the bed in its weak light. There was Jack, lying on his stomach, casually propped up on his elbows. Dark stubble covered his cheeks and his hair had grown enough to start to curl at the ends. Across his back were dark fissures, thick stripes that drank in the darkness of the room. They gleamed wetly in the light. I remembered what Amelia had said about Walkers and burning. I thought of the stench of the room. I was very nearly ill.

For all that, there was still something glorious about him. He gave the impression of both mercury made to stand still and granite convinced to dance. There was a reason this was the First Man. He was a man other men would like to follow.

I didn't comment on his wounds since he seemed unwilling to be troubled by them. "I came here because I promised Emma I would," I reiterated. "But you're right. She might not know it but she's better without you." I wasn't going for reverse psychology. It was the truth. "But you could at least give me some answers before I leave you to your Cheese Whiz dungeon."

Jack laughed. Then he thought of chess pieces being moved around a board. _Maybe not._ "You're only here because of my sister?" The pitch of his voice said he expected a "no."

"And Eric," I said since he already knew the answer.

"You're putting us all in danger for him. You don't even know him."

This again. Couldn't he give it a break?

"You're treating Emma like she's an idiot and you don't even know her."

"I've known her since the beginning of time." Literally.

"Yeah, yeah," I said like I encountered ancient beings everyday. "You've known the Density for a long time. You don't know Emma any more than you think I know Eric."

Jack laughed. "Fine, woman. I'll answer your questions about where and who and why if you answer one for me."

"Shoot."

Jack grinned in the dark. There was something sad about the smile, like the Cheshire cat's last radiant display of teeth. "Given the choice, with repercussions only for yourself, would you eat from the tree of knowledge and have your eyes opened or would you remain a happy child in the garden forever?"


	23. Chapter 23

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**Note: **Thanks again to Meads for her help with this one. And as always, to nyc for her tireless work throughout.

**CHAPTER 23**

It took me a second to process what he was asking. Then my stomach sank, slid right down to keep my pedicure company. You don't ask that kind of question in a place like this unless there's a chance of mayhem breaking loose.

There's a famous riddle with a man at a crossroads to Heaven and Hell. Both roads look the same. Very Robert Frost. There's a guard on each road and one of them always lies and one always tells the truth. He's allowed to ask them one question and based on the answer he has to decide his own fate.

It's one of the ones that makes your brain hurt even when you know the answer. Plus, I've always wondered why God would give Heaven a secret password and make it so difficult.

I've been that guy plenty of times. But, here, in a basement that's not a dungeon, in a room that is a cell, things are backwards. Jack didn't say there would be real consequences but I wasn't born yesterday. Would I remain stupid and happy or would I grow wise and damn myself? I was the guard at the crossroads and I'd forgotten the punch line.

I thought about the day Bill had come in to Merlotte's. I'd had the strangest feeling ... when I walked toward him, I already knew that everything behind me was past. The life I had been living was already dead and gone. Like Gran is now. Like Debbie Pelt and Dawn, like Crystal and her baby. Like Claudine and Tray and too many others.

There was a flaw in Jack's question. The consequences wouldn't just be for me.

Down one path they all got to live, down another, I got to live ....

I shook myself out of my own thoughts and saw Jack, still prone, looking back at me. For once his face didn't wear that ever-present grin. The soul behind his eyes was old as sin, older, and it made me doubt the shape of my own. He had seen me outside of my skin.

I told myself it was them or me. But maybe that was just a lie that kept me sane. Down one path I became me, as I am now, and they died along the way. Down the other I became me, feared, pitied, and virginal; me without Bill, or Eric, or the lingering memory of Blue Suede Shoes; me, without fairy heritage, or king's favors, or diagrams drawn in scars; me, without a body in the woods, or the world's best shower, or the sinking floating feeling that the vampire was not a bad man and I might love him. Me, without a blood bond. Me, with a free will that was free.

Would I change what I had done, given the choice? Would I ask Arlene to wait on him? Would I turn back toward my dead past and stay there so everyone we could all be ignorant, and happy, and alive?

Yes.

_But_, a practical voice in my head reminded me, _that's not what the Walker's offering. You can't go back. You can live forever but you can't go back. _

It sounded an awful lot like Eric.

I took a deep breath_. _I wasn't a child in the garden. I was at the crossroads . Happy, wise, ignorant, and damned. I'd already been down all those paths and run smack into Heaven and Hell in all directions.

The answer to that famous riddle is the guy asks each guard which way the other guy would tell him to go. But there was no other me to ask or to answer for.

So I told him the answer I'd won for all my painful, lonely years as the only one of my kind. "I can't very well choose to be what I'm not."

Jack's grin didn't betray a thing. No help there. He'd wait to see if I'd pick the fruit before he'd bite.

"Hell, I've already eaten. I might as well bury the core and grow myself a new tree and climb up and take a look around." I smiled, a little embarrassed, I guess, that I couldn't even lie about undoing the Fall.

Jack smiled back and I pictured him napping under a tree at the crossroads of Heaven and Hell. "Ask your questions."

"Does Felipe plan on killing Eric?"

Jack stretched, insolent and lovely, as if he really was under a shade tree and not half-rotting in a dungeon. But the smell of the room betrayed him. "And how would I know that?"

I tapped my foot on the concrete floor with annoyance, the click of my impractical shoe echoing water that was dripping somewhere. "You admitted to Walking in Victor so why not Felipe?"

He inclined his shaggy head in agreement.

"So take a guess," I said.

"No," he said lightly. "He's worth more to Felipe alive than dead. And killing a vampire who saved his life would be ... distasteful."

I snorted. I couldn't help it. I'd heard it all before. "Well thank God he has good taste then."

"God? God has very little to do with it, I think." Jack shifted like he wanted to turn over and then thought better of it.

"I guess you would know."

"Next question."

"Why should Victor Madden want us to see you?" Bill had stepped out of the shadows and fixed an impressively intense stare on Jack like I'd called him in for a well-timed tag team.

"All part of the show," Jack said, and I didn't think he meant the documentary. "He wants Louisiana."

_Louisiana? _"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked, grasping at straws. Jack could make this much easier with a few stray thoughts but for as easily as his mouth seemed to be open to us, his mind was closed to me. "Eric's not King ...."

"And Victor can't be either," Bill said, the tone of his voice added, 'not everything is about Eric.' "Not without Felipe granting it to him."

Jack turned his grin on Bill who seemed little affected by the expression. But that was pretty much Bill's M.O. "Go on."

Even without the help of telepathy, I hopped on Bill's brainwave. "Victor is Felipe's second in command, right?" Just like Andre had been Sophie-Anne's. "You'd think he might want to delegate a little since he's got three states and all." I felt the familiar creeping sensation that usually came when I thought of Andre, like my skin wanted to walk in the opposite direction of anything to do with him, including my own memories. And just like that, something clicked. "But ... is Felipe Victor's maker?"

"No," Bill said. "And Felipe wouldn't hand over a third of his kingdom to a vampire subject to another maker."

"Double jeopardy points go to the dead man," Jack said. He sounded almost as tired of the whole situation as I was. I wondered how many things he'd grown tired of over the years. A morbid part of me wondered if life wasn't one of them. "Sookie, put it together for the win."

But I didn't think enough like a vampire (or a Walker) to solve the puzzle before Bill did. "Victor needs someone to kill his maker."

"Oh!" I said, very intelligently and at the same time Jack made a rather patronizing, "Ding!" I looked down the Walker, at his beautiful broken skin stretched painfully across thinning shoulders. I wondered how he might be the missing piece to so many puzzles. I had everything to do with the shape inside his skin. "And I guess Victor can't kill his maker himself." I cast a sidelong glance at Bill and could almost see the vampire Lorena out of the corner of my eye.

"No," Bill agreed. "And Felipe would not want to cause a scandal by murdering a vampire for the sake of an underling. Or have the murder traced back to him."

"Then who?" There was an idea nibbling at the edge of my brain like that faint buzzing feeling before lightning, everything poised for the strike. I didn't know if it needed my attention or my distraction to flesh itself out. It would have to be someone reckless and powerful. Someone who wouldn't be tied back to Victor and Felipe. Someone ....

I was looking down at Jack even as he was turning his eyes up to me. His eyes shone in the torchlight like mirrors waiting to be broken. I saw myself, face and fingers sticky with knowledge, wishing I had never bitten. "I need to know," he said. But without hearing his thoughts I knew he already did know. "I need to be sure."

"She said if I brought you back, she'd take the blame for the kidnappings," I said slowly. "That doesn't mean she'd _kill_ a vampire. Not for Victor, he's the one that's been holding you here."

Jack barked a short laugh—at which of the things I'd said, I wasn't exactly sure. "At my request. At least, at first."

I felt very much like a tollbooth on the road of other people's plans. "You want to check on her," I said. Not a question. "And the easiest way is through me. That's why you've been answering my questions."

"That and the goodness of my heart."

"Fine." For all I knew he'd been through me dozens of times already, hundreds. "But I have some more questions first."

"Quickly," he said. "You've been here a while already and they have ways of persuading me back."

My eyes stuck and shied away from the evidence of that persuasion. "Who's been kidnapping the young vampires?"

"My sister," he said immediately. "If you want a why, I'll need time and some Walking distance. Money's part of it, but not all, I think."

His voice was easy, almost shockingly so, as if the crime in question wouldn't have fire, brimstone, and fangs raining down on Emma if word got out. I couldn't tell if he was casually damning her or just really confident that she carried a good umbrella. "Where do these super-humans come from?"

He cocked his head to the side, puzzled at the question and at me for asking it. _What do I look like, a Magic 8-Ball? "_Try again later."

"You don't know?"

"I haven't exactly had a lot of opportunity to leave this room lately. I'm sure you noticed my bracelets." He rattled the chains that secured him to the bed. "I noticed yours. Which one of us is the prisoner, I wonder."

"I'm not a Walker," I said. My fingers had moved of their own will to touch the mess of strings at my wrists. The thoughts and prayers of home.

Jack clicked his tongue in admonition. "It's much better to talk about the past, Sookie. You weren't a Walker. The present is much harder to nail down. You can't stop it and take a good look without changing it."

"Rhetoric," Bill said, voice creaking with the threat of avalanche. "Answer her question."

"I don't know," Jack said. "I don't know anything about the humans to which you are referring. But I'd be happy to find out. Are we finished?"

He could go at any time he wanted, of course, but he couldn't be sure we wouldn't burn him out. "One more question. You know something ...."

"I would certainly hope so. And more than one thing, too."

If he wasn't injured and chained to a bed I probably would have given him a good smack. As it was, I'd have felt like the personification of kicking someone while he's down. "About Eric. Something you don't want to tell me." I hadn't missed the hints he'd dropped or the parts in his stories that didn't fit. _He'd had Emma killed ...._

Grudgingly, he bowed. It was an oddly formal acknowledgment.

"Tell me."

"Why?"

"He's important to me." I felt the slightest twinge of regret that Bill was here for this part of the conversation, and wished he'd fade back into the shadows so I could pretend it wasn't hurting him. But there he was, gray-faced and silent, still half-dead from defending me. Half _extra _dead.

"He's been a round a while, I'd imagine he's been important to a lot of people." Jack's reluctance to answer this, of all my questions, had my insides twisting.

"I'm important to him."

"Better."

"He loves me." He thinks so, anyway._ I think so, anyway. _

Jack curled his long body and twisted to sit, arms contorted awkwardly in his chains. "You are one of hers," he said proudly, sadly. "If you bite the fruit, remember, the taste lingers. You can't be rid of it with soap." _Or poison, or love. _"You can't spit it out. You can't go back."

"We've been over this," I said. Afraid he would make me afraid.

"You give me time to Walk, I'll tell you what you want to know," Jack reasoned.

"Ok," I said amiably. "But flip the order."

Bill made a disapproving sound but I ignored him. I lowered my torch toward the Walker, just a little. The inches made me ill but something in me was straining—something frighteningly eager to smash itself against whatever truth Jack had to offer. It was the part of me that had grown all twisted and snarled around Bill's betrayal, the part that held up a few too many blood exchanges as proof against real feeling.

Jack sighed and I thought I could hear him faintly in my mind, counting the passing seconds. "I'll tell you part now and part after. My word on it."

He knew how far that had gotten him the last time. Still, I did want to know if Emma really had plans to murder Victor's maker, if this whole pageant of absurdity was part of an elaborate plan by the King of Nevada, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Excuse me, _Mr. de Castro_. And at the very least I'd be getting some new clues out of the bargain. "Fine. Deal."

Time to see if I'd bitten off more than I could chew.

"Eric and I are nearly contemporaries. I am older by only a few decades." Jack spoke as if he was telling a tale that was being ruined in its rushing. "What I am is far older than what he is but it's much better to talk about the past." I rolled my eyes. "What he once was, who he once was, is older than I have ever been. Almost the oldest."

"The oldest what?" Time for eye-rolling past.

"The oldest anything."

"Who was he?" I asked, teeth clenched, bite taken, juice running from my mouth.

In a voice that didn't quite believe itself, Jack said, "He was Samael, who set the stars on fire."

A memory of dazzling light bloomed behind my eyes, light that made the sun look dull and watery.

I blinked, blind once again in the poorly lit dungeon. "Jack," I said, in a voice that didn't quite believe itself, "Remember to wipe your damn feet."


	24. Chapter 24

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**Note: **An interlude. A little break in the tension. Enjoy.

**CHAPTER 24**

"How long will it take, Walker?" Bill, always practical, asked.

Jack had been sitting hunched over, bent by the length of the chain. Now he was twisting himself back to lie prone. "I'll be as quick as I can be. If we are interrupted, there is always the table." Jack tipped his head back, indicating the shadowy edge of a table at the foot of the cot. It was littered with more shadows.

"Come back before that," Bill said levelly. "If a vampire enters this room he will know Sookie has helped you."

Jack looked up at Bill as if he wondered why Bill had involved himself in the first place. In my head he sighed and let a thought slip free, _Young_. Aloud he said, "Don't worry Compton, no harm will come to Sookie on my account."

"She is in this kingdom on your account," Bill reminded him.

"And look how healthy she is!" Jack said, "Practically glowing." With that he stepped out of himself, effectively ending the conversation.

His body went suddenly slack. Someone should tell him that he did a remarkable imitation of a corpse. I hastily dropped my shields (and let me tell you how strange that was after spending years tossing them up in panic). There was Jack as I'd first seen him, sitting up smoothly out of his own body, muscle groups aglow as they announced themselves against each graceful movement. His body remained, limp, on the bed, a thing that was entirely his, something he'd worn for a long time and now chose to set aside for a bit.

He tested spirit joint and spirit limbs in all their radiance and then stood. "Thank you, Sookie," Jack said clearly and quietly. It was the first time I could remember seeing him so serious.

"What about ...?" I held up a wrist and showed him the strings tied there. They felt tight, as if they'd shrunk or my wrist had grown.

"Housewarmers," he said with a smirk. I thought of the kiss Mrs. Darling had kept at the corner of her mouth that only Peter Pan could get and wondered if anyone would ever be able to pry that grin off the Walker. "For keeping you in, not keeping me out." He reached toward me and passed his hand through my hand. I felt a tug, like our fingers tangled and caught. I drew my hand away hot skillet style.

"What happened?" Bill asked immediately.

"I don't know," I answered honestly.

Bill started forward, fangs extended like he might defend me from someone he couldn't touch.

"Sookie, you are a Walker waiting to happen," Jack said, ignoring Bill entirely as if he saw the vampire no better than the vampire saw him. "Your spirit is right there beneath the surface. That would be my fault and I am sorry." His face went from pensive to a state of sudden, exaggerated worry. "Don't tell Bill!"

A short laugh escaped my clenched jaw and I cast a quick glance at Bill who was eying Jack's body menacingly. "I won't," I said. "But you'd better fix it."

"I will."

"Yeah, yeah," I said, not as angry as I probably should be. "Your word."

Jack took off a hat he wasn't wearing and gave me a sweeping bow. "Ready?" He asked, straightening up.

"Do I have to ... do anything?"

"Nothing." He stepped forward.

I was silent, waiting to feel something.

"Where is the Walker?" Bill asked, muscles tensed, silver poisoned lips fixed around waiting fangs.

"Gone," I replied, wondering what would have happened if I'd tried to grab on this time.

I guess you could say Bill relaxed. He put his fangs away anyway. "The Walker mentioned Samael." Bill's voice hadn't gotten the relax memo.

"Yeah," I said. "Who is that?" I'd heard it in church maybe ... but ....

"I only know of one Samael," Bill said. "One Samael and a lot of stories."

Then my attention was hijacked by a new voice. "Sookie. Let go. You need to drift away."

At first I thought it was Jack, whispering those words of his at my soul. But then I realized that the room was different. Vaguely, I knew I was still in the basement of Sanguine but now the dungeon cell had another place glazed over top. I was walking in a mirror that wasn't reflecting the world I knew but the world it remembered. The other world, the real world was dissolving away like it'd been made of sugar and now dropped into hot water. The new place was colorful and warmly lit but the angle of it was wrong. I was on my back and there were people hovering over me, no, not people. Vampires.

Fear was welling up from somewhere, fear of pain that I could swear must have been happening the instant before I got here. I looked up, away from the pain, up across fields of gold and ivory. Up and up. Then my eyes skittered across blue and I fell into the sky. "Put it down Sookie. I'll take it a while. Trust me."

I did.

Everything changed.

I tumbled the wrong way through the air, down and down. As I fell, parts of me stayed where they were. Fear fell away, and embarrassment (though my dress must be up around my ears). Mistrust stuck fast where my body had been a second ago. "You're safe," said the place, said the walls of the rabbit hole. As I fell, I was wrapped in the quilt from my bed, Gran's quilt. And there was a fire going somewhere, and someone had made me breakfast. Maybe that's where I was headed? Somewhere safe, and quiet, and full of home.

But I could have sworn there was a different way to get to the kitchen.

No matter. I didn't care if I never got there. I'd be quite content falling forever. This place didn't seem to have a bottom so falling was no different from flying.

"Come back now."

I stopped. Or maybe the world stopped passing me. I thought about collecting the parts of myself together. There were still things missing. Wariness. Mistrust.

But I had more pressing concerns. It was dark and I was wrapped in something that wasn't Gran's quilt. It was damp and clung at my waist, twisted under my arms. I pushed at it, wondering why I'd left the rabbit-hole. I almost thought ... I could I have sworn I had been falling into the center of myself. If I'd gone a little farther I would have gone forever, I would have been in the stars.

It was dark. And I was too hot. And someone was humming. _Badly. _

I pushed at the fabric that clung to me and a frustrated grunt interrupted the mangled melody.

"Allow me," said the rabbit hole that was no longer flying past, just lingering somewhere in the dark. Cool hands slid under my back, making me weightless again, pulling me the wrong way through the air, lifting me gently into a sitting position. I hadn't realized I was lying down. Two sounds started at once. One should have been, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." The other was a zipper.

A zipper.

It was dark.

_My _zipper.

"Are my eyes open?"

"No," said the rabbit hole.

"Oh." I resolved to fix the issue.

Maybe in five minutes. I was too hot. Sitting, I could feel the spot the heat was coming from, a patch on my stomach that felt as if the Devil himself had given me an appendectomy.

The cool hands helped me to lie down again. "Your skin is too hot. Even for a human, I think."

_What would you know? You're a rabbit hole_, I thought ungraciously but the rabbit hole's blessedly cool hands were lifting my hips and mercifully pulling off that hideous damp-clinging fabric, my suffocating second skin. So I thought this would be a bad time to offend it.

"Are my eyes open?" I knew I had already asked but I hadn't paid enough attention to the answer.

"Still no," said the patient rabbit hole. Then it laughed at me.

"Oh." I didn't think it usually took much effort to open my eyes. But I found myself wishing the rabbit hole would make them weightless.

_I wish I may, I wish I might ... _Wish not granted.

A huge amount of concentration later, I saw the first shy flutters of light. _Twinkle, Twinkle ... _

"You sing very badly."

I blinked against painfully bright light. Maybe the light was the reason I was so darned hot. I blinked and blinked a shape, a face, into focus. "You look like Eric," I told the rabbit hole.

"I am Lief."

"Don't believe you." I decided to test the rabbit hole's identity. "You are late ... for a _very_ important date."

"I don't think so."

Not its fault. The rabbit was late, not the hole. Holes don't have pocket watches. "How do you know?"

"Pam would have called," it said reasonably.

Ah, yes. Maybe it _was_ Eric. "Maybe you can be Eric," I granted magnanimously. Then, "Eric why is it so _hot_ in here?"

"It is only you, Sookie," he said but his voice was all wrong. Not enough leer. Must be on account of his being late. Or a leaf. Or a rabbit hole. Whatever. "Your body is fighting infection. You were staked. Do you remember?"

"No." I fought with my eyelids again which had managed to close without me noticing. This time I turned my head a bit and saw that I was lying on top of a rather luxurious comforter on an even more luxurious four-poster. Also ... "Eric, am I naked?"

"No."

"Am I almost naked?"

"Yes."

Well, damn. "Did you do it? Why did you undress me?"

"Because you were not doing it very well." Yup. Reasonable rabbit hole.

"Thank you."

Eric laughed. He would be used to women thanking him for taking their clothes off.

"It's hot, Eric."

He vanished above my line of sight and then reappeared with a glass of water. He studied me for a moment, blond brows contemplating the mechanics of water drinking. "Will it hurt you worse to sit again?"

"Is the water cold?" I asked and he nodded. "I can sit."

This was not exactly true, I quickly found out. Eric had to help.

Bonus.

"Eric, stop moving," I said urgently. _Or there will be dire consequences._

"Am I hurting you?"

"No," I wriggled so more of his arm touched more of my back. It was blissfully cool. A shade tree at high noon. The first lemonade of summer. Hot apple pie with cold ice cream. I sighed. Okay, so maybe it was more of a moan.

Eric laughed quietly, and I fought my eyes open yet again to see what was funny. "It seems I confused agony and ecstasy," he said, sitting next to me on the bed and placing his other hand across my forehead. The water had disappeared.

He stroked long fingers through my sweat-damp hair. His nails scratched lightly over my hot scalp, and I swear I felt like an irrigated field, like he was putting the life back into me row by row.

"If you even think about stopping, I will kill you. Again," I threatened, reaching up to cover his hand with both of mine, holding it in place and cooling my palms. "Killing two birds with one hand ... 's worth two in the bush."

"You are making very little sense," Eric said, numbly as a rabbit hole. "You should drink some water. Then sleep."

"Okay," I said amiably and then promptly screeched a protest when he took his hand back from me. "My stomach hurts. It's _hot,_" I explained. "And I am way too tired to kill you now. Even though I said I would."

"Yes. You were staked."

"Oh." I could feel his bottomless rabbit hole eyes on me so I tipped my head up and to the side to look at him. He was looking at me. "What are you doing?"

"Wondering if I can glamour you into remembering. You are very annoying."

"I am feeling very ... stupid," I admitted.

"It's the drugs the doctor gave you."

"And the stake," I said, proud for remembering.

"Drink," he said, one hand behind my head, one on the glass.

The water was delicious. Where was I? Mississippi? "Mississippi water is delicious," I said between gulps. "Remind me if I forget. I'm afraid I'll forget." It was important. I could hear the urgency in my voice. I drank more water.

When I finished the glass, Eric helped me to lie down again. But then he moved away and I was hot, sweating all over the beautiful bed. "Come back," I said. "Please."

The bed dipped as Eric laid down next to me. He slid an arm under my overheating body. I turned in toward his cool chest, laying my head on his shoulder and working my cheek inside his collar. I felt like my brain was going to boil right out my ear.

"Sookie, what are you doing?" His hand had covered my hand that was struggling with the buttons of his shirt.

I was undressing him. Obviously. "You are not doing it very well," I reasoned.

He laughed and said something that sounded disbelieving but I didn't think it was in English so I couldn't tell. Then he was gone for a moment, leaving my head to fall against the pillows. Then he was back and all at once I was pressed against the full, cool length of him.

I sighed a sigh that started in my toes and ended in my breath against his collarbone. I was suddenly that indescribably perfect temperature that makes your skin feel new and fresh like it's never properly felt the world before. I moaned again. I'd intended to say, "Thank you, Eric," but I think only the "Eric," part made it out.

He rumbled a warning in his chest. "You will be very lucky if I don't eat you up."

"Now don't ruin it by getting all horny." I smiled sleepily. I wasn't sure who I was warning.

My breasts were pressed against his chest, the blistering heat between them mercifully trickling off and down across his ribs. Not all of me was getting cooler for being skin to skin with him. One particular part was getting decidedly warmer, in fact. Guilt arose from somewhere, somewhere outside the four poster bed, somewhere before the stake-shaped hole in my stomach. But, I reasoned with the guilt, I was only _almost _naked and far too tired to do anything about heat of any kind it. That's why he was here.

Minutes, hours, days later, I finally roused myself enough to turn over, cooling my back against the rabbit hole turned vampire. A few minutes after that I shivered.

"You are very ... high maintenance," my rabbit hole said and the comforter was pulled up over us.

When I began to get too hot again, I pulled him arms back around my waist. "Right here," I said, guiding his hand to the stake-shaped hole that was becoming a stake-shaped scar.

The heat of it was scalding, burning me right up from the inside out. But he cupped his cool hand over, not quite touching, and I felt a little better. I leaned back against him, against the solid, comforting weight of him. He was Eric and I felt safe, felt safe because of him instead of in spite of him. Who would have thought he'd be the one who wouldn't leave me?

I felt myself sliding under that heavy, winter blanket sleep. "Eric," I said, before it could claim me. "Remind me about the water. Mississippi water." He made a noncommittal sound that I decided to take as agreement. "And remind me that I undressed you." That got a laugh. "And remind me that you were nice to me."

I let my eyes slide closed, humming, Eric's cool skin and Gran's quilt warm. Somewhere, someone had made me breakfast. I wondered if this time I'd manage to fall into the stars.

But then I was blinking and the world was crystallizing around me again into firelight and shadows.

"Sookie. What happened now?" Bill's voice yanked me back to the here and now, pulled me out of a memory I'd forgotten was mine, one that had been lost to drugs and shock and exhaustion.

"You were humming." Bill sounded as uncertain as I'd ever heard him. "Did the Walker do something to you?"

I blinked and shook my head, replacing Russell's Mississippi mansion with Felipe's Cheese Whiz dungeon. "I'm not sure," I said, then reconsidered. "I think ... maybe he thanked me."


	25. Chapter 25

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**CHAPTER 25**

"How long has it been since Jack left?" I asked, not meeting Bill's eyes.

"Nearly ten minutes." Bill didn't sound happy at all. He would be pacing right now, if he paced. "I thought he'd taken you with him—but you didn't fall."

"No he ... I was sort of having a flashback?" They are way more unsettling than they are on TV. "He gave me back a memory, I think."

Bill looked away for a moment, and, when he turned back to me, I was met by the full intensity of a very angry vampire stare. "Sookie, you can't just let him do that!"

"Do what? Walk through me?" I matched Bill stare for stare. I'd weighed the options and made the call. I really didn't feel like fighting with him about it. "It's not like I can stop him."

I could read the look on Bill's face almost as well as I could read other people's thoughts. It was that I'd _let_ Jack Walk through me that was the problem.

"It's your _soul_ at risk here, Sookie. He'd shred it to ribbons without thinking twice if it suited him."

I suppressed a shudder. Maybe Bill was just trying to scare me and maybe he really believed what he said but I'd felt the horrible, suffocating feeling, of Jack's hands around my wrists when I'd Walked. I didn't even want to think about what it would feel like to have him touch my soul. "Well it's a good thing it doesn't seem to suit him then." The vampire still didn't look convinced. "It was a good memory," I assured him. "I'm fine."

The room was quiet except for the soft sound of water dripping somewhere. My mind was humming faintly with the thoughts of the people staying in the other rooms (boy, would they want their money back if they knew what was going on next door). I'd left my shields down so I could see Jack come back.

"So now we wait," I said, wishing there was a chair in the room or at least a carpet on the floor. I thought about sitting on the edge of Jack's cot but I was pretty sure Bill wouldn't love the idea. Plus, there were probably some pretty nasty things on that bed.

I kind of expected Bill to take some down time but he seemed pretty intent on watching the Walker's body like it might spring up and attack.

I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to rub some heat into my arms. I hadn't exactly dressed for dungeon excursions. "What do you know about Samael?" I asked. I'd been so sure I was right when I told Jack I didn't have a choice, that I couldn't go back. But that didn't mean I was especially eager to push forward. "Are we—are we talking Satan here?" The very last thing I needed right now was for Eric to turn out to be the Devil. No really. It was the very last thing.

"That's a contemporary misconception," Bill said, articulate but unsure. "The little I know about Samael comes mostly from Judeo-Christian tradition but ... well there's not exactly a lot to go by and I'm hardly a scholar in the subject. And it's part of your deal with the Unmaker that he'll explain." He was reluctant to say more but I was not inclined to give in.

Not a scholar? He probably still knew more than I did. "Fine. Tell me what you do know and—I don't know, Google the rest later. You know very well that all we're doing now is buying Jack time and even if he does plan on keeping his promise, Victor or Felipe will probably show up first and be pretty pissed that he's ... you know, _out_."

Bill glanced at Jack's emptied body, looking rather annoyed that the Walker had left the details of the explanation to him. "Samael was supposed to have been the most beautiful angel in Heaven and one of the ones that had a hand in the creation of ... well, everything."

"Not so bad," I said, immediately aware that I'd spoken too soon.

"There are conflicting reports but some say he was the angel of death, that he ruled Hell by God's design, that he tormented Job, and wrestled with Jacob." Bill paused for a moment, and then shrugged quickly like he'd forgotten the most obvious one, "Tempted Eve in the garden."

_Fell because he was proud_. Yeah, I knew the guy. "That's sounding a heck of a lot like the Devil, Bill." My insides were squirming.

Bill shrugged and didn't offer any evidence to the contrary.

I took a deep breath of very stale air and sat down on the edge of the cot, forgetting the reasons why I shouldn't. "You said you knew _mostly_ Jewish stuff ...." Might as well have it all out now. I rubbed at my temples, making room in my head for a lot of stuff I didn't need in there. In love with the Devil. Excellent. Might as well just FedEx myself to Hell right now and save some time.

"There are rumors among my kind too ... that it was Samael who made the first of us, that he was the First Maker. It is said that he was not content with the part he played in creation and wanted to create something for himself. But being the angel of death he couldn't create life, only animate dead matter."

"So he made the first vampires." I was right there with him even though I really didn't want to be and even though Bill wasn't the world's most expressive storyteller.

"According to the myth, yes."

I let my head fall forward into my hands, let my hands press against my eyes hard enough that I saw spots. I remembered the searing brightness of Eric's mind, the light that I thought would burn me up. _He was Samael, who set the stars on fire. _"Is it possible? Is there any way that _Eric_ could possibly be ... or could have been Samael and the First Maker and all the rest." And, maybe more importantly, if he was, did he know?

"Eric is old," Bill said, his calm starting to irritate me. "But he's not that old. Christianity alone is older than he is, and Judaism began as a desert tribal religion thousands of years before that."

Okay, so the time didn't match up. That was something. Maybe. "But Jack said he _was _Samael. That he used to be." That could mean anything and probably did. "Jack and Emma sort of reincarnate, maybe Eric ...." I let the words fall off into my lap.

"Maybe the Walker lied. He told you something you wouldn't understand so he could use you to get what he wanted." Bill's voice was suddenly coming from behind me. I turned to see him standing at the head of the cot. He'd picked something up off the table. A small blow torch. "We could ask him."

I was tasting bile, sharp and bitter, before I'd even really processed Bill's words. I looked at the expanse of half-healed burns that was Jack's back and almost threw up right there on the floor. "No," I said between one dry heave and the next. "We'll wait for him to come back."

"We've been here nearly an hour," Bill reasoned. "Someone will come soon."

"We'll wait for him to come back."

"Sookie, what will we do?" Bill asked sharply. "Even if the Walker returns on time, how will we get him out? Do you plan on freeing him yourself in the daylight?"

"If I have to."

"The sun doesn't stay up forever and you are under Felipe's protection but that doesn't protect you from Felipe. If you take his prisoner, he will find you and he will kill you."

I shook my head. "I'll get Jack back to Emma and she'll hold up her end." I'd be with the Density then, both of them together. I'd definitely gotten the impression that that would at least make the vampires pause for a while. "And Felipe will let Eric go."

Bill just stared at me. Okay, the plan sounded a little absurd to me too.

"You don't know how dangerous what you're talking about is."

"Oh for the love of …!" I was so tired of being treated like a child because I'd missed the course on the secret history of the world. "Everything Jack did was hundreds of years ago! Hundreds! People can change. In a thousand years, people can change!"

Bill was shaking his head.

"Then what—?"

But Bill's head jerked toward the door before I could finish my question and he worked at the switch on the blow torch. It lit with a dull roar like a far away rocket ship, but, even as it lit, the door opened.

"Good evening, Miss Stackhouse, Mr. Compton." If anyone had a crocodile smile, it was Victor Madden. "Mr. Compton is quite right about the risks you face."

My good manners failed me just then and I made a very unladylike snort.

Victor stepped into the room with two other vampires who looked very much like Eric's guards (or who at least did really good impressions of their general huge over-muscledness) behind him. "Am I correct in saying that you are feeling a little uninformed, Miss Stackhouse?" Victor was so clean and pressed that he almost looked green-screened onto a background of a dungeon room.

"To put it mildly, yes," I said, afraid and annoyed at just how often I was afraid these days. Was this how I'd die, in a Vegas dungeon at the hands (fangs) of two meat-headed vampires? Correction, were Bill and I going to die at the hands of two meat-headed vampires? Bill had gotten between me and the others but at a nod from Victor, one of the them promptly and easily restrained him.

"Well, we can't have that," Victor said, genially as always. "You were asking after my guest, Mr. Jack Smith, called Walker, or Unmaker, or Genocide Jack." Victor talked like he was narrating a storybook themed ride at an amusement park. "Unfortunately, the list of his crimes is quite long but the one I believe Mr. Compton is so anxious about is what we call the Holocaust of the Ancients, or sometimes the Terror of Timbuktu, because the alliteration is very pleasant." He turned to Bill. "If you'll stop struggling for a moment, Mr. Compton, Hanschen will be happy to release you. I am here only to speak to Miss Stackhouse."

I didn't have the energy to consider the vampires' aesthetic preferences, or to try to convince Bill that him getting himself killed wouldn't do anyone any good. Fortunately, he figured it out on his own. "I've heard of it," I said, remembering Emma's story in the garden. "The final battle in the last fairy war, when a whole bunch of fairy princes were killed."

Victor smiled and shook his head. I'd never seen him look anything but jovial but he was smiling sadly now. "I am afraid you are mistaken. The battle you speak of prompted the Holocaust but they are not one and the same."

"But—" I cut myself off. I guess the vampires wouldn't get so worked up over a battle they'd won and they definitely seemed to consider this Holocaust of the Ancients to be a big, bad thing.

"This is deplorable," Victor said. "Clear Miss Stackhouse a decent place to sit."

I jumped up as the vampire guards, Thing One and Thing Two, went to work. Thing One unlocked one of the cuffs on Jack's wrist and moved his body to the floor while Thing Two flipped the thin mattress on the cot.

_Seriously?_

"Thank you?" I said, taking a seat on the (somewhat) cleaner cot and feeling pretty bad about the awkward way Jack's body was slumped against the remaining handcuff and the side of the cot.

"As I was saying," Victor continued. "The Holocaust was not the last battle, but the fae response to the last battle. Many of their elders had been killed, as you said, and the vampire host met in Timbuktu to celebrate its victory and the inevitable breakdown of the defenses of Faerie. The fae wanted vengeance, of course, and to prevent we vampires from entering their homeland."

He'd said 'we.' "You were there?"

"No, no. I was not even born then, let alone made vampire," Victor inclined his head. "So great were our numbers, the remaining fae lacked the strength to stage even a surprise attack on the vampire host while it was collected in the near east. So they enlisted the help of the Density who had been friends to both the fae and the humans involved in the war.

"There was a great feast in Timbuktu, blood from every corner of the world. Rare blends of exotic serums, sweetened with fairy blood," Victor closed his eyes with relish and even Bill was transfixed. "The feast lasted many nights. There was an entire menagerie of human servants, exquisite creatures of every culture and color, who served the vampire host, filling cups with the prepared delicacies or supplying fresh blood from their own veins without a word of protest if some vampire warrior requested it.

"On the last night, the vintage is said to have been unlike anything ever tasted before or since. A perfect balance of human and fairy that hummed with life and burned with mortality. The ancients of our race raised their glasses to the bravery of their children and extended their blessings to the masses. Vampires crowded the main hall and the younger ones left outside heard word of the speeches and stories from their betters who were allowed inside that place.

"At midnight, a most curious thing happened. A human pair, male and female, approached the ancients at the head of the hall. They were lovely specimens but unremarkable in that gathering of blood and beauty. The host watched, amused, when the female raised a goblet, one that belonged to an ancient, no less. 'A toast!' She said. 'From the royalty of Faerie. To your health!' To vampire hearing, her voice carried to the corners of that place and where it fell, the host _changed_."

Victor paused, as if to collect himself. I waited, counting the drips of water, not ready to do anything beyond listen to this myth from another world. "It is said that there was a terrible sound like a wind from one of the hells had entered that place. But it was only the sound of hundreds of lungs suddenly gasping for breath. Then the screaming began.

"The Density had worked some kind of magic and poisoned that night's blood with their own. All who'd feasted within the hall had become human and were afflicted with horrible visions of death at the hands of vampires in the battle. But more than that, they were filled with memories of fear, of despair, of knowing the battle would be lost and their nations would be overrun .... The male and female were lost in the chaos but the host remained human for many days. A great number of them went mad during that time and would have taken their own lives, but the young vampires, who had not tasted the blood, prevented many of them from succeeding.

"When the curse finally left the ancients, the memories of terror and pain did not go with it. The ancients were deranged, one and all, they despised their own existence and, returned to their full strength, their children could not stop them from meeting the sun."

Bill's eyes were downcast and Thing One and Thing Two's eyebrows had drawn together in confusion or sadness.

"They killed themselves?" I asked. "All of them?"

"All who had tasted the blood and heard the voice," Victor said. "Nearly all of the oldest and best of us attended and all of those died."

The voice ... Jack and Jeyne, it would have been Jeyne, must have kept silent, must have made a point to touch every vampire there, to be seen by all of them, before Jeyne spoke so they'd all change at once. But what about the visions? What kind of magic could have done that?

I already knew.

"Blood binds ... and communicates," I said, drudging up Amelia's lesson on physical magic. "They were Walkers ... they gave the ancients the memories of the humans who'd died in the battle."

Victor shook his head. He wasn't smiling. "Their method was never discovered but that is one theory. Whatever the cause ... their supposed vengeance was not equal to our crimes. We had killed while at war and they retaliated by slaughtering unsuspecting thousands. So few of our elders escaped ... we lost a great part of numbers but we also lost most of the history of our race. We were orphaned."

Eric had not been there because his maker wouldn't allow it, I remembered. "Genocide Jack," I said, suffocating under the weight of the story. I looked at the Walker's body, slumped on the floor. He had not died since then. It was still him.

I should never have left Bon Temps.

"I don't understand why you've told me this."

"Ah well," Victor sat next to me on the cot like he'd just told me a nice bedtime story. "You are the crux, Miss Stackhouse. You are invested in all the players of this game as we are all invested in you, so I want you to understand what is on the line when I make my next move and ask you to bring Mr. Walker back home to his sister."


	26. Chapter 26

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**CHAPTER 26**

"What?" Bill and I were in chorus and it might have been funny if it wasn't so gosh darned serious.

"It is quite simple. I held Mr. Walker at his own request. The arrangement was mutually beneficial initially. He provided a valuable service and I provided a measure of security."

"Security for whom?" Bill asked. He'd recovered pretty quickly from shock and awe. I was still working on it.

"Mr. Walker, of course. When he came to me with the arrangement, he expressed concern for the safety of his sister should she find him, as well as concerns over his own self control."

"Why'd he go to you?" I asked a little rudely, but I couldn't help it. There's was something creepy about Victor (not Andre-level creepy, but still), and it was more pronounced when he was trying not to be creepy.

Victor waved a hand at the cell, summing up the chains and blow torches and cinderblock walls. See? Creepy. "I had the power to hold him and lacked the desire to kill him. You should thank me, Miss Stackhouse. Eric Northman was also a perfectly viable option."

_Not quite_, I thought ruefully. _Adam probably thought twice about asking the Infernal Serpent to lock him in the basement. _

I scooted away from Victor who was just a little too close for my comfort. "But everything you just said ...."

"Tragic, yes, but what do you say? Ancient history."

Well, Eric _had_ said his bosses were forward thinkers. Maybe I should just start operating on the idea that Eric was always right. And possibly Satan.

I could see emotions rippling across Bill's face that was usually so tightly guarded. He probably wanted to say all the things I did right now. The difference was, Victor was kind of his boss. Sometimes it pays not to have a place in the pecking order. "Is the only reason I'm here really to play chauffeur to a dangerous, supernatural killer?"

Victor arched a delicate brow. I wondered if he waxed. "I was under the impression that you came to defend your husband."

Was Victor making a joke? "Oh come on! I bet even _they_ know the trial is bogus," I said, pointing at Thing One and Thing Two. I was simultaneously angry, ashamed for pointing, and proud of myself for using such a silly sounding word as 'bogus' correctly in a sentence.

"Sookie," Bill warned.

Victor made an exaggerated show of being caught. "But she is correct Bill. Though I should warn you, Miss Stackhouse, such little displays of bravado are not as endearing as they are on television. Were I someone else, I might be rather nonplussed at your hostility toward the agent of a king who holds you in such high regard."

_Nonplussed? _Wow, scolded and then shown up in vocabulary. Victor had quite the way of telling the human her place. I had a lot more questions but— "When are you letting Eric go?" That one wasn't going to wait.

"At the conclusion of the trial, of course."

"But you just said—"

"Mr. Madden," Bill interrupted calmly, but just then I experienced another kind of an interruption. I hadn't put my mental shields back up since I was in a room of all vampires (unless you counted Simon who was half-asleep in the bathroom) and my vision suddenly went shimmery. I threw my hands up to rub at whatever had gotten in my eyes and realized too late that I was seeing the Walker returning.

Bill and Victor both turned at my sudden movement. "I take it my guest has come back" Victor said. "Miss Stackhouse, your talents are many. I find myself constantly charmed to have made your acquaintance."

"Mr. Madden," Bill repeated and I was glad. I didn't need to hear any more about my charms. "You are asking a human woman, one who has been invaluable to His Majesty in the past, to involve herself in considerable danger. Isn't freeing Eric reasonable compensation?"

"Sookie, don't do this," Jack said. But only I could hear him.

"She has also been very costly," Victor said, smile never faltering. "Vampire lives have been lost defending hers."

Clancy. I felt pretty bad about that.

"And she has saved vampire lives as well," Bill argued staunchly.

That would be Felipe and that was definitely a point in my favor. I'd saved Bill and Eric a few times too, plus warned a whole bunch of vamps that the Pyramid of Gizeh was about to explode, but that tended to get overlooked (except by the FBI; they'd noticed).

"I'm not going anywhere without him," I said, in case anyone cared how I felt about it. Fat chance. I stood up and crossed my arms so I was looking down at Victor.

Across the cot, Jack was mirroring my position but giving me the stare down. "Sookie, this is the worst thing you could do."

"You lied to me," I told the Walker.

"I never did," Jack said levelly, like he didn't care if I believed him or not.

"And what assurance would I have that you would deliver Mr. Walker to Emma Asli?" Victor asked like I hadn't just been talking to an invisible man.

"Make it an order," I said. "Eric's always been loyal, hasn't he?" It was true. Victor and Felipe had only been making up reasons not to trust Eric, he hadn't given them any. Unless you counted sneakily marrying me when they probably didn't want him to.

"He has," Victor agreed. "Though I don't know that 'always' is an appropriate descriptor for a few months' service." He nodded succinctly. "Done."

"Done?" I needed some clarification here. "You're going to let Eric go, _right now_, and order us all to take Jack to his sister in Bon Temps." I spoke very clearly and slowly, making sure there were no loopholes in the deal because it looked like I was being given what I wanted and ordered to go home. That was a little too good to be true. Scratch that, _way too good_.

"Yes," Victor said.

"And drop the charges laid against Eric," Bill added.

"Yeah, cool it with the trial," I said. Good one, Bill.

"That will require some contract negotiations with the Discovery Channel," Victor said, and I was about to protest, but then he added, "Which Simon will be happy to take care of, I'm sure."

"So that's it?" My adrenaline level was starting to dip. My body really wanted to believe Victor because then maybe there'd be a little break from all the danger and it could sleep. I willed myself not to yawn. This was such an inappropriate time for yawning but think too hard about yawning and ....

"The hour is quite late for all of us," Victor said when I yawned so loudly that my jaw cracked. "Are we agreed then? I will arrange a flight to Louisiana for the two of you, Mr. Walker, and Mr. Northman and you will deliver Mr. Walker to Emma Asli and make certain that she holds to her bargain with me."

"Which is to kill his maker," Jack put in. "And return all the vampires she's taken."

Okay, so maybe that was the catch. But there weren't exactly a lot of other options.

###

In the lobby of Sanguine Hotel and Casino Bill drew in a breath of fresh air even though he didn't need to. I knew exactly how he felt.

"Mr. Madden has asked me to take you to Mr. Northman and to arrange a flight to Shreveport for your party," Simon said, back in tour guide mode. We'd been there when Victor had given him these instructions but Simon was working under several layers of glamour so I couldn't blame him for forgetting.

"And you'll be getting Mr. Northman another room," I said.

"Of course," Simon replied easily. "If his current room isn't suitable, we'll be happy to provide him with different accommodations."

We boarded the elevator and I felt better and better the farther we got from Victor. He'd stayed behind to have a few words with Jack. As for the Walker, he'd returned to his body before we left the dungeon but hadn't exactly been talkative. If the two were talking now, I was pretty glad I wasn't there for it.

The elevator doors opened way sooner than I expected. In my head we were bound for one of the towers or at least for a residential floor. Instead we'd only gone a few floors up. Simon led us briskly down a hallway that was carpeted in a lush emerald green carpet and straight through a set of dark wood doors. "This is one of Sanguine's lesser ballrooms," he said.

At least, it usually was. Now the place was crawling with men and woman loaded down with camera equipment. Huge lights sprouted from an array of poles like a bizarre light bulb forest. There was sawdust in the air from the newly made portions of the set that now took up most of the space in the ballroom. If I had to guess, I'd say I was looking at an Inquisition era court room.

Simon left us for a moment to talk to a woman who was off in one corner, pinning a hodgepodge of fabrics to a vampire who looked decidedly familiar but who was also decidedly not Eric.

"I guess they're going to have to find someone else to put on trial since they built this whole set and everything," I said.

Bill shrugged. "Felipe was turned during the Inquisition, I'm sure they'll put it to use for other aspects of the documentary."

"They should just film it in the dungeon," I said. "It's pretty much set up for an Inquisition."

"Not enough space for the equipment," Bill said.

Then Simon was back and I could see a few pictures I didn't care for in his head. "_Why_ did the guards drag Eric out of here?" I asked, not at all in the mood to politely pretend I couldn't read his mind.

"It seems Mr. Northman became agitated about an hour ago during his fitting, and the guards, as you said, escorted him out." Simon shrugged. That really was all he knew. "Melinda was taking his measurements, she says she has no idea what happened. No one spoke to him and he'd seemed fine up until then."

"Victor came into the basement an hour ago," Bill said quietly. "Eric would have felt your anxiety." I wondered how often Bill still felt my 'anxiety.'

"Blood bond," I said. "Right." And then to Simon, "So where is he now?"

"He's most likely been shown back to his room."

Eric's room, it turned out, was in one of the towers—at the top, if you can believe it. Sanguine had dungeons _and _tower cells.

While we were riding up once again in the elevator, I remembered the vamp who'd been getting fitted back in the ballroom. "Simon, that vampire that was with the wardrobe lady ... he looked an awful lot like you."

"That's my brother," Simon said easily, but his thoughts were more conflicted. His brother had been turned a few years ago it seemed as a reward for his services to Felipe de Castro. He and Simon were twins. "We won't look alike for too much longer though."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Simon said, "I'm getting older and he's not."

###

Eric's room was the only one on the floor. The elevator opened into a small vestibule. In that vestibule was one ordinary looking door and one extraordinarily large vampire. "James," Simon said and nodded to the guard. "Where is Caedmon?"

"Feeding," the vamp guard replied in a voice like a cement mixer. "He sustained an injury while transporting the prisoner." I smiled a little to myself. Eric wouldn't have taken being 'escorted out' very well at all.

On closer inspection, James was definitely a separate entity from the guards who'd come into the basement with Victor (he was also a little rough around the edges like he'd recently gotten a little too close and personal with a Viking) though no less imposing. They must just grow them like that in Nevada.

"Not a prisoner anymore, James," Simon said.

And just like that, the vampire giant stepped aside. They _are_ obedient, those vampires.

Simon keyed in another number sequence at the door and it opened with a _whoosh_. The room inside was fairly ordinary except that it was rounded at the back due to the shape of the tower. Oh, and the walls and the inside of the door appeared to be coated in silver. Deadly _and_ expensive.

Eric was standing calmly in the center of the floor. I felt the familiar rush of contentment come over me and with it, something else: Eric was ready for a fight. "What are you doing here, lover?" He asked lightly, belying the tension I could feel over the bond.

"Oh, you know, rescuing you," I replied, just as lightly. "Sort of."


	27. Chapter 27

**Disclaimer: **See part 1

**CHAPTER 27**

Vampires like to think of themselves as being more evolved than humans. And it's true that they're stronger and faster and some of them can fly. But when it comes to instincts, the whole 'fight or flight' thing, vamps are way more in touch with their animal sides. Like when I told him we were on the next flight out of Vegas, Eric Northman, Sheriff of Area Five, calm, collected, older than empires vampire did a pretty good imitation of a badger.

Not that I'd ever tell him that.

Living in Louisiana all my life, I'd never seen a badger except on Animal Planet. But once Bud Dearborn came into Merlotte's fresh from a visit with family out west. He said he'd gone hunting with his son-in-law and seen a badger take on two coyotes that were trying to block the badger from its den. In the end, the badger shuffled off home and the coyotes went away bleeding. The moral of the story: never try come between a badger and his hole.

Eric was incredibly reluctant to leave his room. And you haven't seen incredibly reluctant until you've seen Eric do incredibly reluctant.

"Come on, Eric," I said for a second time when he ignored the first prompt.

He didn't say anything, just stood calmly, eyes searching both Bill and me for ... injury? Some hint of betrayal?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised or annoyed since I hadn't exactly wanted to explain the circumstances of his release in front of Simon and the guard at the door. So for all he knew, Bill and I had been tricked and were about to lead him into a far worse predicament. So I shouldn't be annoyed that he was being so stubborn. But I was. And the fact that Bill and I really _might_ have been tricked, and really _might _be leading him into another predicament didn't make matters any better.

"Listen," I said, reminding myself that it would be really childish to stamp my foot. "We're on the next Anubis flight out of here but you need to come with us so Simon can go arrange the flight. Unless you want to spend the day sleeping in a silver room."

I regretted that patronizing little threat immediately. There was something feral and excited and almost panicked in Eric's eyes. I knew that look from the fairy war. He'd definitely been gearing up for a fight to the death.

"There are tactical advantages to this room," He said finally.

I tried to look at a locked tower room, the surfaces of which were coated in silver, from Eric's always logical stance. There was only one entrance, so he couldn't really be surprised. And I guess if it came to a fight, the silver was just as dangerous to any other vampire and Eric was a pretty skilled fighter so he'd probably manage to use it to his advantage. And, about the whole tower thing, if he did get out of the room, it wouldn't be that hard for him to break through the wall. Then being on a tower would pretty much be 'game over' for any vamps picking a fight with him since he could fly and most of them could not.

So we basically had a badger in his den scenario.

Now how to get him out? All the silver was making me nervous. After the fairy war, I'd been pretty banged up for a while (obviously) but even through the cuts and bruises, I started noticing something pretty strange. My skin tended to sort of itch and tingle when I touched certain pieces of metal. Eric's assertion that we'd almost hit the point of no return with the blood exchanges suddenly became real when I realized I was developing a silver allergy.

The point being, if the silver room was making me nervous, Eric and Bill should be having conniptions.

"Eric, things here are not what they seem," Bill said helpfully. "Sookie will explain later."

Bill's attempt to reason with him didn't go any better than mine had.

How to get the badger out of his hole ... I sighed, rolled my eyes, and tried to keep a smile off my face. There are two things in life sure to get Eric's attention. The second one is a good fight.

I put on my best frozen smile, turned back to Simon and Bill to indicate that, given a minute or two, I'd settle this.

Then I approached Eric very slowly, knowing he'd have a pretty good idea of what was on my mind due to our bond. He relaxed (a little) when we were toe to toe and I put my palm flat on his chest. "Eric," I said very quietly through my smile. "I've spent a _very_ long night trying to make sure we all get out of here in one piece. And we're going to. But if you don't take me back to my room and have your way with me at least three times before the sun comes up, I will leave you here to play dress up in Felipe's movie. Got it?"

He did.

###

An hour later I was starting to suspect that Bill had paid Simon to give us the run around. I'd decided it was bad manners to ask my former lover to relocate so I'd have a private space to get it on with my current lover. I mean that's basically the definition of rude.

It quickly became apparent that light tight rooms were in short supply. The smiles of the staff members at the front desk of Sanguine were strained as they hastily clicked through databases and whispered slightly panicked suggestions to one another. The vibe in the lobby reminded me of a bride-to-be trying to do the seating arrangement for her reception in a way that will magically prevent murder amongst the in-laws.

I asked Simon if the hotel was always at full capacity like this and he said business was good. Of course, I could also hear loud and clear that it wasn't usually _this_ good. "Alright, spill," I said.

Simon gave me a smile that I knew all too well. I used it at Merlotte's to say, 'Thanks for being patient with me folks, your drink will just be a minute' or 'I'm just going to pretend that I don't know you're staring at me like that because you heard I'm crazy and involved with vampires.' What Simon said was, "We get a lot of human and supernatural guests here. Now that they're out, sometimes Shifters request the light tight rooms since there is added security on the light tight floors. Plus, the film crew brought some vampire consultants with them."

"_Simon_," I pressed. "Really, what's going on?"

And Simon, who knew I'd get it from him one way or another, cracked. _Usually you adapt to a job and get better at it_, he thought. _But I think I come closer everyday to getting myself killed._ "The attacks by the Sons and Sisters have gone on all night ... and they've gotten more aggressive. Two vampires have been injured and there's a rumor that one's been killed."

Simon and I exchanged looks that said it all, how strange it was to be facing a threat _to _instead of _from_ vampires, how weird it was to have a small amount of immunity just because we happened to be human. Speaking of which ... "What about humans?"

"The attackers seem to be making a point not to injure any human bystanders but I don't have any word on how many casualties _they've _had." Simon was keeping his voice low and smiling for the benefit of the handful of guests checking in at the late hour. "This isn't the first time there's been, well, attacks by humans with unexplained abilities on vampires in Las Vegas. But it's never lasted this long or been so widespread. And, well, they seem to be getting more dangerous. Felipe's called the Nevada vampires in."

"I require my possessions at once," Eric said behind us. Eric had immediately demanded that I explain the terms of our release once outside his cell. He clearly didn't trust the situation but he also hadn't given me much grief. Eric wasn't the type to waste time on how things could have gone better, his M.O. was always to deal with the problem at hand. Since our problem, for the last hour, had been finding room at the inn (and he'd come to grips with the fact that I wasn't going to have sex with him in one of the tower lounges to pass the time even if they claimed to be "private") he'd quickly gotten bored with all the clumsy human efforts and dropped into downtime. But apparently Simon's assertion that Felipe had called in the troops had caught his attention.

I shook my head, trying to clear the fatigue and stress-induced fuzz that was wrapping my brain. It didn't help seeing Eric, who'd been playing statue, suddenly spring into action like a nightmare at Madame Tussauds. Simon sent a human lackey after Eric's cell phone and everything else that he'd had to hand over on becoming a "guest" of the King of Nevada but Eric took off anyway and I was left to smile back at Simon while he tried to finagle us a room. He tried a joke about Eric and Bill bunking together but it fell pretty flat.

Finally Simon worked some magic and I was showed to a new room on a light tight floor while Simon stayed at the front desk to put out a few more fires.

The new room was exactly like the old one which, in turn, was exactly like a nice hotel room without any windows. I put my carry-on in an unoccupied corner and sat down on the bed to think about how light in vampire hotels is weirdly uniform and how even though the lack of windows makes it impossible to tell what time of day or night it is, I was developing a pretty decent dawn instinct of my own. I guessed there was at least two more hours till dawn.

I thought about changing into pajamas but it seemed like an overly optimistic move. Even though everything seemed to be progressing toward a state of crisis, the sun would rise soon and put a damper on a good portion of the scheming and panicking. That's the thing about vampires, they can leap tall buildings and recover from speeding bullets but they just can't hack sleep deprivation. Who knows what I might need to do when the sun rose?

My body was just really settling into a nice post-adrenaline heaviness, warm and sleepy, when the locking mechanism on the door whirred to life and Eric stepped through. His presence made me even warmer and sleepier—inconvenient since we needed to finish our scheming before the sun came up. "What did Pam have to say?" I asked. I'd figured out pretty quickly, when Eric had perked up at mention of Felipe's precautionary measures, that he wanted to know the state of things back in Louisiana. With Felipe, Victor, and Eric out of the state and the other sheriffs all new to their offices, Pam was pretty much responsible for all of Louisiana. At least as far as I could reason.

"There have been more attacks in Louisiana. Bill showed me streaming footage on the internet. It's more of the same, humans who are stronger than humans can be." Eric's face didn't betray anything and even the bond was calm.

"What's Pam going to do until you get back?"

"She's ordered the Area Five vampires to go to ground. Sunrise is nearly upon them and it would unwise to confront the enemy until we know more."

"_Do_ you know more?" I asked.

Eric nodded and sat next to me on the bed. "Several news productions sent reporters to Fangtasia since it is a known vampire-owned establishment but hasn't been attacked. Pam went out to give them a statement to try to prevent the media from helping these skirmishes escalate to the point of a national vampire emergency. She was attacked on her way back to the employee entrance."

"Oh no! Is she—?"

"She is fine," Eric said, as if there hadn't been any other possible outcome. "She did not kill the attacker because there were cameras present but she did taste her. She said she tasted vampire influence in the woman's blood but the taste was not right for one who has been drinking vampire blood. One of the injured Nevada vampires reported the same odd taste."

I rubbed at my temples, trying to focus on all the little bits and pieces of information that were playing pinball inside my brain. "So that tells us ...?" I was definitely at the 'sleep on it' stage. "Absolutely nothing?"

But there was more.

"You know prisoners were being held here," Eric said. It was almost a question. I hadn't told him yet about the men from the anti-vampire gangs being held in the dungeon but apparently he'd found out.

I nodded.

"The King had their homes searched. The searchers found these in the refrigerators." Eric held up a screw top container of clear plastic that was about the size of his hand. At first glance, the cylinder appeared to be full of ice chips and... "Worms?"

"Leeches." Eric corrected.

And what I had assumed were ice chips was actually a clear gel (for keeping the leeches alive, I guess). "Ew. Why?"

Eric looked at the little leech farm almost thoughtfully. "I met a vampire called Du'an Kocic maybe a century ago, who was intensely interested in the practice of using leeches to draw off bad blood. He said that certain breeds of leeches seemed to be partial to vampire blood, and, if applied to a human who'd had vampire blood, the leeches would diminish the effects of the blood. He claimed that he had prevented a human from turning by leeching the body while it was undergoing its three days of burial. The human died, of course. But the vampire—he was well on his way to becoming a renouncer, it seemed—hinted that he hoped to continue his studies and perhaps one day use leeching to reverse a vampire's turning."

"Are you kidding me?" I was pretty fully awake now.

"No. I am not," Eric replied, missing or ignoring the rhetorical nature of the question. "Shortly before beginning his experiments, Du'an turned Victor Madden."

If I hadn't already been sitting on the bed, now would be the time for sitting down hard. I could practically feel my brain trying to form new synapses, trying to sort out the right connections. "So you think ... Eric that's kind of big a leap, isn't it? To assume Du'an whathisname is involved."

Eric just looked at me steadily, maybe watching to make sure I wasn't going to pass out from all the stress of the past few days or something. But I felt oddly calm. It occurred to me that someone should start marketing blood bonds as an alternative to Paxil. While our bond had a whole slew of problems of its own, currently it was just doing a pretty great job at reassuring me that everything was going to be alright.

"It was Victor who made the leap."

Okay. Maybe that made the leap a little smaller consider the whole maker/child thing. "How does he know?"

Eric held up the leech farm again. "He tasted one."

"Seriously?" I eyed Eric warily just in case he was having similar ideas. I remembered all too vividly what had happened the last time Eric decided to eat a leech.

But Eric just shrugged. "These attackers have proven to be quite dangerous to vampires here and in New Orleans who are under Victor's protection. Another vampire sampled a leech but was unable to discern any useful information. Victor thought he recognized the scent of the blood ...."

"So he ate one." Maybe my opinion of Victor was a little biased so maybe it was unfair that I was shocked over Victor taking a risk for the benefit of anyone besides Victor. But if ever there was something to make me go 'hmmm', this definitely qualified.

Then I remembered something. "Wait, didn't you say Du'an was a renouncer? Shouldn't he have met the sun already?" Obviously he hadn't since there was that whole deal with Emma about killing him.

"I would have assumed the vampire I met a hundred years ago would've engineered his final death by now, yes." There's was an almost expectant look on Eric's face. I was busy enough thinking about what might change a renouncer's mind that I almost missed it.

"What?" I asked, making a face of my own. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I am waiting for you to use that obnoxious aphorism about assumptions and donkeys." Eric answered, smirking.

It took me a second to sort out his attempt at vernacular, then I broke into a grin. "Oh, what? 'When you assume it makes an ass out of you and me?'"

"That's it," he confirmed. "And it is as trite and irritating as I feared." He leaned forward and kissed me in a long, lingering kind of way that made it clear he had no intention of stopping there.

The night had been packed full of all kinds of adrenaline with nowhere to go. Humans are just not made to fear for our lives and then sit around dungeons discussing politics and history. Adrenaline is meant for fighting or fleeing. But it seems it can be diverted pretty easily to another activity that begins with 'f.'

"Eric," I said a little breathlessly (tearing myself away from the full attention of his lips was no small feat). "As nice as this is, shouldn't we figure out what to do next, you know, _before_ the sun comes up."

Eric kissed me thoroughly, pulling my bottom lip between his teeth and grazing it with the tips of his fangs. I took that to mean 'no.' "Don't worry, lover," he said finally. "I have a plan."

My resolve cracked when his hands started stroking my ribs and circling upwards. My pent up adrenaline didn't much care if there was a plan or not. The thinking part of me just hoped that whatever his plan was, it extended at least slightly beyond getting me naked.


	28. Chapter 28

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**CHAPTER 28**

**Author's Note:** Story's getting quite long of tooth now, isn't it? So for a little recap...

Last time on "I Have Gone Out"

We began with the ever popular subject of 'where, for the love of Buffy, was Eric while Sookie was suffering at the hands of the torture happy twins?' Sookie has distanced herself from Eric due to the uncertainty brought on by his no-show. In the meantime, a few supes in Bon Temps (namely Pam and Jason) come down with a short but brutal case of human-ification due to a waitress at Merlotte's (darling Emma) who turns out to be none other than Eve, Mother of All Mankind. She and her "brother" Jack, as the original humans, have a nasty habit of sapping supes that get too close. Emma saps Eric pro bono and he has a nice moment with Sookie in the sun wherein he reveals that he couldn't enter faerie to find her due to wards set up to keep anyone who meant the Fae harm out. And since he'd experienced his own bout with the twins, he definitely meant them harm. Then things spiral out of control ...

We soon find out that Fangtasia bartender Felicia has gone missing (as have several other young vamps over the years) and Victor is laying the blame on Eric because Eric can't account for his whereabouts at her time of disappearance. Sookie and Eric fake a falling out so that Sook can be in Victor's confidence when Eric is called to trial. Eric suspects (rightly) that they're all being watched. Enter Jack: spirit Walker extraordinaire who's been peeking at Eric's memories and reporting to Victor. The catch is, Jack's body is far and away, a prisoner of Felipe's in Vegas. Sookie, Eric, and Bill take off for Vegas for Eric's mock trial. Sookie's been charged, by Emma, with freeing Jack.

We learn along the way that 1. Jack's done some pretty crappy things to Emma 2. That Emma and Jack have done some pretty crappy things to vamps in general and 3. That something's definitely shady about Eric's past. When we last saw our heroes, Sook has just gotten Eric out of his Vegas cell and they're all scheduled to head back to Shreveport the next night to return Jack to Emma on the condition that Emma kill Victor's Maker so he, Victor, can become King of Louisiana ... and so it continues ...

**Chapter 28**

The bed in our hotel room was shaping up to be my favorite place in Vegas.

"This room is infinitely superior to my previous accommodations," Eric said, teasingly sliding his fingertips over the sliver of skin bared by the slit of my dress. ''

"Lack of silver wallpaper really improves a place," I said. _There you go Sookie, find the humor in a night of dungeons and deadly interior decorating._

"Yes," Eric said, concentrating a little too hard on the thought, "I suppose that is one way this room is better. Though I can think of others." Eric had been laying on his side, but when I pulled him down for another kiss, he changed our positions faster than I could follow. One second I'm on my back, looking up at my vampire lover, and then my stomach drops with a velocity change and I'm straddling said lover and looking _down_ at him through the curtain of my hair.

Eric started laughing almost immediately at my expression which was probably a tad flabbergasted. I swatted at his chest with my palm. "What?" I said. "That's not fair. Have you ever been on a roller coaster?"

"Yes."

Okay, stupid question. He'd probably been on all of them.

"I was not terribly impressed," he continued.

"Okay," I said. "But follow my metaphor for a second."

"I'm all ears," he replied.

I couldn't help smiling at the expression any more than I could help leaning down to bite at one of those ears just a little and work my lips over the cool skin behind the lobe. Eric liked this very much so he let me have my way for a few minutes before digging his thumbs in at my waist in exactly the wrong way. I sat straight like a shot. "Eric! I _hate _being tickled," I said, nearly shouting.

Reclining easily on the fluffy hotel pillows, Eric didn't look at all sorry. He looked kind of annoyed. "Sookie, lover, were you about to compare making love with me to riding a _roller coaster_? To being held in place by ill-fitting safety belts and hurtled violently about?"

Whatever comparison I had been planning to make escaped me, so I considered which answer was more likely to get him to put his hands back on me immediately and which was more likely to make him determined to tease me mercilessly first. It wasn't that long until sunrise after all. "Um, no," I said, not quite able to keep back a smile at the very deliberate feeling of disbelief that washed through the bond. "Of course not."

But before I finished denying the accusation, we'd undergone another reversal. I was on my back again with a good portion of Eric's weight resting on me. That wasn't all, he'd locked my arms across my chest and his knees were on either side of my legs, pressing them together. He leaned in as if to kiss me, then stopped short. "Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle for the duration of the ride."

"Oh, for the love of ...!"

###

We were in varied states of undress when there was a knock at the door. "What?" I said a little raggedly. Eric had spent a very, _very_ long time touching all the parts of me except the ones that wanted it most. "I put up the 'Do Not Disturb' sign."

"And I called for a travel coffin," Eric said. "That's why the poor bellboy has been pacing around outside the door for ten minutes now. I think he got nervous when you started cursing amusement parks with such fervor and decided now was as good a time as any to interrupt."

I didn't quite agree with the bellboy but Eric was out of bed and to the door before I could protest. I only just had enough time to pull up the sheets for modesty (even with my arms and legs in roller coaster position, Eric had managed to get the champagne silk dress off me, surprise, surprise). I half expected Eric to let the bellboy wheel the coffin right into the room. Eric was not one for modesty, his own or anyone else's. But instead, the Viking played the gentlemen (relatively speaking, he had, after all, _opened the door_) and pulled the travel coffin into the room, blocking as much of the doorway as possible with his body and promptly closing the door when the coffin was inside.

The kid still got in a quick glance at me. I knew because I could see myself there in his head. I could see the image of me in bed pretty clearly as he lingered by the door, my skin getting tanner and the sheet getting lower with each passing second. "Thanks for running interference," I said. "But he still got an eyeful."

"I'm sure it made his night," Eric replied, pushing the coffin into a corner and coming to stand at the foot of the bed.

"You have no idea," I said, the image in the kid's head finally starting to fade as he walked off toward the elevator.

"I think I might," he argued in a voice like spun gold. His eyes lingered on my ankle that was sticking out of the tangled sheets and traced a path up my hidden legs.

Right then his phone rang.

"Don't answer it," I suggested.

"Of course not," he said, eyes still fixed on my legs. "Unless it's Pam, or Felipe, or ... Compton!" He said too cheerily, flipping the phone open. With his free hand he drew the sheet down my body in slow increments, the fabric just heavy enough to be distinguishable from empty air. _Sanguine _didn't cut corners and the sheet was the kind that felt like cool silk no matter how long you spent laying under it. If nothing else, my association with supes had taught me to recognize expensive bed linens. I guess that's something.

Eric was looking at me with such intensity that I kept forgetting that Bill was on the phone. I was pretty focused on staring right back at his pupils that had gone wide and his lips moving purposefully. "Are you certain your activities are not being monitored?" Eric said just before he picked up one of my feet and applied those lips to the inside of my ankle.

I've heard that the longest nerve in the body is the one that goes to the feet. I'm pretty sure that whole nerve lit up at once, burning a path of fire and electricity all the way to the center of my spine, setting my hips writhing before my brain managed to catch up. "Mmm," I said, the height of eloquence. And then I remembered two things: Bill was on the phone and vamp hearing. "Eric! Stop!" I mouthed silently, furiously.

But then he sunk toward me, nodding to something Bill had said and murmuring, "I see," just before his mouth started work on my inner thigh and his fingers gripped my knee that was usually so ticklish that it set me kicking. But that knee, like the rest of my body, was staging mutiny in favor of Eric. I exhaled sharply when his lips and tongue began to inch up my thigh and then slapped my hands across my mouth. "I would prefer a window seat," Eric said casually, and then, just as casually, bit lightly at my leg. A strangled moan escaped through my nose and I made a mental note to tell Eric that it was really unfair of him to use the fact that I had to breathe to his advantage.

"Rude!" I mouthed at him this time. When a person is rude he should be told that he is rude, gosh darn it.

Unfortunately, Eric had a keen eye and the scolding had left my mouth free to jump on the betrayal wagon so when he abruptly hitched my leg over his shoulder and switched his attentions to a far more intimate venue than my thigh, my response could probably be heard a room or two over.

A few minutes and a few fried nerve endings later, my arms reflexively pulled him up to me while the rest of me tried to recover from having been melted into a puddle of Sookie. "That was really not very nice of you, Eric," I managed after a lingering kiss. The fact that little muscle tremors had my voice doing strange things and that I'd really needed to breathe in the middle of the sentence kind of ruined it for impact.

"Not nice?" He asked. "Really?" I peeked out through heavy, sated lids to see him doing a show of being confounded. "Well, what is it that's said about practice?"

His eyes had dropped to my breasts and gone predatory. I gulped, still trying to recover my breath, still trying to reestablish the borders of my body. "That it's completely overrated?"

His teeth grazed my collar bone while his fingers did a sensual dance across my ribs. "I don't think that's it."

"That you need a doctor's note to miss it?" I tried. I could see his phone laying open on the bed, the display gone dark.

"Try again."

"Practice makes perfect," I said grudgingly and then let out a far less grudging, "_ah_," when his mouth descended on a nipple. I could feel the little swirls of pressure change as he laughed so proudly at himself.

"But really Eric," I said, trying to push what he was doing to the side long enough to stage my protest. "It was mean to do that to Bill. He looked out for me all night."

"Should have been me," Eric said, raising his head with a different kind of intensity. I could feel it across the bond, a strange feeling of tightness that made my jaw clench in sympathy.

"I was fine," I insisted.

"Liar," Eric replied flippantly, though there was more concern than I expected in his eyes, softening them out of their lustful focus. "Don't bother Sookie, I can hear your heart speed up when you lie."

"That might have more to do with where your fingers are, Mr. Wandering Hands." Even giving me the third degree, Eric was Eric after all and while he stared me down, his right hand had gone off to ... test the waters. I rolled my hips up to meet the prodigal hand, hoping Eric's train of thought would follow. I'd been in enough peril tonight not to want to spend time rehashing it. But Eric's attention (the _rest_ of Eric's attention) wasn't so easily diverted.

"You met the Walker in person."

"Yes," I agreed, distractedly. There was a feeling I couldn't identify welling up in Eric. It didn't echo across the bond to rise up in my stomach like these things usually did but was almost a physical sensation, like a living thing that wasn't me was stirring inside my skin. It was ... unsettling. I laid my hand against his face to comfort him before I realized I'd done it.

"Bill said you let him Walk through you." Even his southerly hand had gone still and there was nothing to distract me from the intensity of his questioning. Well, except for the fact that he was still leaning over me and we were both more or less naked. Being naked in company's always kind of distracting. Being naked with Eric puts all other distractions to shame.

"What's with you people and the 'letting'?" I asked with frustration. A girl can only take so much and between the peril and the naked, I was past the point of 'so much.' "What was I supposed to do? Say, 'Sorry Jack, I'm closed to incorporeal traffic today, check back later'?"

"He could have hurt you," Eric said, sounding more like Bill than he'd ever care to know. "He could have hurt you in ways you can't imagine."

I gave him my best 'try me' look. I didn't need to mention that I had witnessed, first hand, things that most people couldn't imagine, the scars took care of that. At least they were good for something.

A muscle in Eric's jaw jumped, chewing on a thought. "He could have Walked right in and poisoned you with memories that weren't yours, with paranoia, or voices that reminded you of every terrible thing you've seen and ones you haven't. He could have Walked out of you and taken every good memory you have of your parents, or your grandmother, or ...."

"You?" I guessed.

He nodded. "You'd become someone else. You'd be left with only the bad memories, you'd be left hating all the people you love," he said matter-of-factly. "And you'd never know it should have been different."

My eyes slid away from his face to contemplate the blank white of the sheets as the reality of what a little memory tinkering could do. My throat tightened dryly, painfully, as I thought of the vampire beside me and wondered if he'd once been someone else.

But Eric wasn't finished.

"He could touch your soul—"

My hand shot out reflexively to cover his mouth and his eyes bulged a little. I guess he was pretty unused to someone manually shutting him up. "I get it," I said quickly. "He's dangerous. I've run into him a couple of times now and ... Victor gave me the history lesson. So I get it." I pushed down memories of the nastier bits of my Walk. Even though I'd bested Jack, that grip he'd had on my wrist (of the spirit of my wrist, whatever) was in the running for 'Experience Sookie is Least Eager to Repeat.'

The thing is, a persistent little part of me kind of leapt to his defense. Maybe Jack was capable of acting out the worst parts of our nature but he was still human and I kind of have an innate bias in that direction. Plus, he did know a heck of a lot. And, from time to time, he was even willing to tell me some of it. Speaking of which. "Eric, I ... Jack said ...." I meant to bring up the Samael thing, I really did, but you know that irrational fear that if you say something, it makes it more real? Yeah, that one had be by the throat.

"Said what?" Eric asked. His fingertips had begun to drift lightly over my stomach, waking my skin in delicate swirls—I knew conversation would soon be lost on him and as much as my body was in agreement, I had a thing or two to say before sunrise.

"Well he ... he gave me back a memory." _Coward. _

"You misplaced one?" He asked lightly. "I did that once, you might recall." I could feel him grinning as he kissed me.

"It's from the night I was staked in Jackson."

Eric pulled back to have more room to preen. "Oh, that," he said with a suggestive raise of an eyebrow.

"I had a fever. You took care of me ... got me water. You were nice."

For a split second Eric looked almost bashful. Maybe he didn't like me remembering that he'd been sweet to me before any witch-induced memory loss.

"Mississippi water," Eric said, and something relaxed between us, tension going out of a cord that was never meant to bear it.

"Yeah," I said. "It's delicious. And I love you." _Okay, braver. Wait ... what?_

"I know," Eric said simply and then moved right along. "So you remember the part when you tried to undress me too? Insatiable, you."

He kissed me good and almost senseless. But not quite senseless enough.

"Wait," I said between kisses. "What? I just said .... What do you mean '_I know_.' When a girl says she loves you, you don't just say, 'I know'." We'd been through this before and at the time he'd kind of pressed the issue, wanting to know how I felt about him.

"You would prefer if I pretended to be surprised?" He asked, and if he was joking, he was doing a really, really good deadpan. "We've got a blood bond. Happened on a night in Rhodes ... cloak ... knife ... the whole building exploded later. I'm sure you'll remember if you try."

"Not the best time to bring up the blood bond. _Honey_." I said with a show of annoyance. "What about you?" I cringed inwardly, glad it was pretty dark in the room. I was already afraid of examining what I'd said in the harsh light of day. I'm not exactly a professions of love kind of girl.

Eric shrugged the shoulder that he wasn't propped up on. He was done joking. "You already know I'm in love with you," he said, looking at me as if _love_ was all well and good he couldn't quite understand the delay in the _making _part of that state of being.

I was still pretty focused on the _love _part. Did he mean that speech he'd made in the car before the witch war? Really? "Eric, that doesn't count. You weren't yourself. You were cursed."

"I didn't mean then."

"Well when?" I asked. "Were you just not going to tell me?"

Eric drew back further from me, eyes wandering to the sheets. "Romantic love is a relatively new concept," he said. "It was basically created by the poet Petrarch in the 14th century."

"Eric, that's seven hundred years ago." If I didn't know better I'd say he was stalling.

"I said _relatively _new."

"Compared to you, I guess everything's relatively new." Hey, I couldn't resist. At least it got him grinning. "Your point?"

"Perhaps I've done it wrong. I've loved you for some time now Sookie, since before I was willing to admit it. And now ... well I didn't know it was customary to make an announcement in the middle."

I didn't say anything for a while. This was probably supposed to be a trumpeting of angels and playing of violins kind of moment but I was a little hung up on Eric admitting he might have done something wrong. It had me looking about warily for the horsemen of the apocalypse.

The rest of it would take a while to settle.

"What you did to Bill was still rude," I said without much conviction. He could have a free pass. This once.

Eric rolled his eyes and rolled to trap me between is arms. "Don't worry," he said, lips at my ear. "I hung up on him."

"Good," I replied as steadily as possible. "Otherwise I'd have to retaliate next time, say, _Felipe _called." I let my hand roam southward to a particular part of his anatomy so he couldn't mistake my meaning.

"Is that meant to be a threat, lover?"

"Oh, yes."

###

As it turned out, when Felipe called, we _were _in a compromising position. Just not the one I'd had in mind. Victor had been treated to a listen of _that _one when he'd called.

"Eric," I said when both of us were too tired to interrupt conversation with any more amorous intentions. "Why is every vampire in Las Vegas calling you _right now_?"

"Terrible senses of timing."

"_Eric_."

"I had very definite plans to ravish you," he said, voice wrapping warmly around me. "If the Nevada regime happened to witness those plans in action and thus realize that I couldn't possibly be doing any kind of scheming, that was all the better for us."

"You made sure they'd call," I asked incredulously. "So they'd hear ... um ... us. And wouldn't get suspicious that you were making plans of your own?" Men, I sure knew how to pick them. "Which worked out since you already had a plan."

"Exactly."

I shook my head in what it isn't fair to call disbelief because this was exactly the kind of thing I should expect from him. "Okay, Victor and Felipe I get. Ew. But I get it. What about Bill? He was just collateral damage?"

Eric's grin showed fang. "More like a gift with purchase."

So help me God, I laughed.

When we were both finished laughing, Eric yawned.

"So what is the plan?" I asked before he got too daylight drowsy.

"To go back to Shreveport," he said simply. "This morning."


	29. Chapter 29

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**Note: **If you find yourself sighing with relief at the lack of typos and general ease of reading you experience in this chapter, express your thanks to nycsnowbird. So, if you feel moved to review this bit, consider dropping her a line instead. And if you feel the desire to do a nostalgic reread of earlier chapters, all of nyc's clean copies will be posted in the near future so the experience will be thoroughly more enjoyable than your first read ;) Any remaining mistakes are mine.

**2nd Note: **January will see the Vampire Author's portion of the Support Stacie Auction. The auction is a great event that benefits a member of the fanfiction community. I'll be "up for bid" this round. Head on over to

http : //www(dot)supportstacie(dot)com/

and check out the Vampire Author Auction auction. It's pretty fantastic to see the community come out to support one of its own. Best of luck to all bidders.

**3rd (and final) Note: **In the intervening time between updates I kind of got up to my neck in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yeah, I'd never watched it before. Late to that game. If you're interested check out "Ruby Red" an SVN/Buffy cross and "Pax Clevelandia" a Buffy/Spike one-shot via my profile.

**Chapter 29**

A hastily booked flight on Southwest was a pretty poor substitute for ruby slippers but it did the job anyway, despite a distinct lack of musical munchkins. I guess it's kind of telling that, by the time I had a reason to fly anywhere, I also had reasons only to fly Anubis.

For once, Eric and Bill were operating on far less experience than I was. Eric made a few references to some "non-commercial" night flights he'd taken but for all I knew that could have been in Kittyhawk with the Wright brothers. Bill had avoided airline travel and all the intricacies of sunlight and photo I.D. until after the Great Revelation and the advent of Anubis and its coffin-friendly travel.

What it all amounted to was a whole bunch of confusion when we, as "C" travelers, were finally able to board the plane. I jumped up from my chair when the crowd of travelers around us seemed to stand as one and make conservative haste toward the door. I had to resist the urge to rush my way into the line that was forming since two of my traveling companions had remained quite firmly in their seats.

Bill had the grace to look a little uncertain. Eric only appraised the line with a cool eye. "I don't think the delightful opportunity to gain first hand experience as a herd animal was included in the price of my ticket," he said.

I tried to keep a stern no-nonsense face, I'd explained to him several times already that the seats weren't assigned, so we wouldn't be able to sit together if we weren't quick. But my stiff upper lip didn't last. His metaphor was a little too astute. I looked over my shoulder at the jostling crowd. It _did_ kind of look like the stampede of the wildebeests from _The Lion King_, if the wildebeests had been dressed in wrinkle-free business casual_. _"Fine," I said, as annoyed by the fact that he'd made me laugh as with anything else.

I marched off to join the line with an oddly silent Jack trailing behind me. The Walker and I stood patiently in the line and I tried not to think of livestock being herded into a slaughterhouse. Well I was being patient anyway. Jack was being ... meek, as in "shall inherit the Earth," just like he'd been for the past several hours. It was unsettling.

I snuck a glance at the still seated Eric and Bill, who, under the fluorescent lighting, looked pale and lost and absolutely determined to be the last people to board the plane. "Dorothy didn't have to put up with Vikings," I said to an unresponsive Jack. "Just clicked her heels and back to Kansas we go!"

Jack didn't bother to laugh or even to look confused.

"You make a pretty good Toto," I said.

He snorted in what I guessed was agreement and fingered the strings on his wrists.

Jack stowed my carry-on for me while I secured one of the last pairs of seats on the plane. It was pretty important that Jack not sit alone. I'd tied a couple of strings around each of his wrists and said a few blessings and gotten Simon to do a few as well, but I had no idea if the slapdash effort would be very effective at keeping him from Walking off. Plus, the strings weren't exactly high security handcuffs. At least airline regulations kept sharp objects off the plane so if he wanted to slip out of his new fashion accessories, he'd have to spend some time picking the knots out.

We'd just settled in and I'd smiled politely at the woman who was occupying the window seat of our row when a shadow fell across my lap. I looked up, then up again to see Eric standing in the aisle. I craned my neck around, looking for an empty seat and finally spotting one a few rows back. I was determined to be the bigger person and help him find a seat. What better way to rub in the fact that I'd told him this would happen? But when I looked back at Eric, he wasn't looking at me.

He'd fixed his eyes and a bright grin on the woman in the window seat. "I wonder if you would mind letting me sit with my wife," he said, and his grin became almost self-deprecating. "First time flying."

The woman didn't say anything for a moment and I half-expected Eric to flash a little fang to turn the plea into a threat. But of course he wouldn't do that, I reminded myself. Besides, when I turned an apologetic glance at the woman, I saw that she didn't look annoyed so much as she looked like she was basking.

I rolled my eyes and said, "Get up," to Jack so we were already out of the way when the woman collected her wits and agreed to move to the empty seat.

"Do you want the window?" I asked a grinning Eric. His grin dropped when he took in the tiny, economy class seats. That made me feel slightly better. When Eric dropped back into the surly mood that had been rolling through our bond all morning, the better feeling kind of went _poof!_

Surly. Of all the words in the English language, that was the only one that could describe my vampire right now. He should be feeling all delighted and superior since his plan was going off without a hitch so far. But no. He was surly.

I considered the middle seat, then gestured at Jack to say, "After you."

So when a flight attendant got on the mic to sing a catchy little tune about the responsibilities of sitting near a fire door, Eric, Jack, and I were sitting side by side and in that order. Eric didn't bat an eye at the exuberant greeting. I guess he just assumed it was a human thing. But he did take offense at being instructed how to wear a seat belt properly (in his less than humble opinion, person who could not successfully navigate a seatbelt should not be allowed out in public unattended).

Eric didn't comment on the fact that I'd put Jack between us. It made perfect sense to keep a guard on either side of him, since, as far as Eric was concerned, Jack was less than eager to get any closer to Louisiana. Ulterior motives were only on my end.

I had quite a lot swirling around my head at the moment: relief at getting the heck out of Dodge (a.k.a. Vegas), amusement at being asked to do a cameo in the BBC documentary (if they want me to be a damsel captured on a Viking raid or something, I'm out), apprehension at the impending reunion of Jack and Emma (I had a feeling that family reunion might actually be an apocalypse), and, I don't know, guilt maybe. That last one was the real doozy. It wasn't that I keeping secrets from Eric, not really. There were just some things that I hadn't had the chance to tell him yet. Big somethings.

And the fact is, I wasn't exactly eager to tell him those big things. So they kind of felt like secrets and I kind of felt guilty. Even though they weren't and I shouldn't.

As the plane began to take off, I nudged Jack's arm. "Are you … close enough to everybody?"

Jack's face was a blank. I wondered what he was feeling. Anger? Anticipation? Fear? I found the last possibility strangely chilling. "Have you noticed anyone combusting?" he asked.

As if on cue, Eric pushed the cover up on the tiny oval window to his right. It stuck halfway up and he prodded it experimentally while morning sunshine poured across half his face.

Right.

I guess this is the part where I should mention everything that went down this morning.

I was still trying to process it all while I sat in that budget airplane but the short version is that the first part of Eric's plan led to a daytime flight that doesn't involve vampire flambé.

In the wee hours of the morning, Eric clued me in on the details of the plan. Jack, it turned out, had done something pretty brave and really stupid during that hour he'd gone Walking out of the dungeon. He'd Walked through me to Emma like he'd said he would, but, instead of coming straight back, he'd hopscotched on through me to Eric. Yep, I'd been some kind of high traffic metaphysical intersection without even knowing it.

He'd taken a pretty big risk, according to Eric. Apparently it's not a good idea for a person to Walk into a vampire while he's awake. In most cases, the Walker ends up stuck in the vampire's memories. Forever. Or until his unoccupied body starves. Which, in most cases, comes before forever.

As for how Jack had managed to get in and out while Eric was awake ....

"You don't know?" I'd asked Eric.

Eric had shrugged as well as a person can shrug while propped up on his side amidst twisted blankets and punished pillows, the flotsam and jetsam of a well-wrecked hotel bed.

"So, just … _Unsolved Mystery_?" I said in my best Robert Stack impression.

Which was totally lost on Eric.

"All mysteries are unsolved," he said, looking at me like he was slightly concerned that my voice had suddenly dropped an octave . "That is what a mystery is."

"Right."

As to _why_ Jack had taken such a risk: it was to scare Eric.

The Walker had brought with him a few choice images of Emma. She was at the Air Force base outside Shreveport and not alone. "Fifty or so," Eric said. "Most were from the Fellowship but a few were in military uniforms." As an afterthought he added. "They fly now."

"But how?" I asked, fighting down a major case of heebie-jeebies as I thought about walking onto a military base full of the strange super humans.

"Magic and science," Eric replied. "It's the leeches. They've been engineered specifically for this purpose. Usually when a human ingests vampire blood, the results are unpredictable. The human might react any number of ways. But these leeches feed from the vampires Emma has taken captive and their biological processes produce blood that passes only vampire strength and speed—and now flight—onto the human."

"But the human doesn't turn?"

"More often than not, the … treatments eventually kill them. Their hearts buckle under the strain. A few of them have turned, it seems, but Emma keeps them human with small infusions of her blood," Eric said. "As a reward for their service, I suppose."

"So you were right," I said, not quite believing it could all be true. "The leeches … Victor's maker ...."

"Yes," Eric said. "Du'an is with her. It is his research that has led to the procedure."

"But why?" I almost asked. Why would a renouncer put off his own death to make a bunch of super humans who might accidentally turn into vampires? But then a few of the pieces collided in my head. "The military. They're working with the military?"

"Yes," Eric said and then did his best to answer the question I hadn't asked. "Vampires are getting more involved with politics every year. We're gaining more rights. The Walker is uncertain what the military agenda is, but if Du'an perfects the procedure, America will have the ability to create soldiers uniquely capable of matching vampires in a fight should trouble arise between our species. Perhaps he has continued his existence in hopes that his work might one day lead to the eradication of vampires."

"Wow."

"Yes," Eric agreed stiffly. "Wow."

He must have been getting these rather disturbing images from Jack right around the time he'd felt my fear of Victor in the dungeon. No wonder he'd gotten _difficult_ with the guards. "It's been a long night for both of us," I said with a sigh. "And, no offense, but we have the _worst _pillow talk."

That should have prompted Eric into proving me wrong with some playful, thrilling, and downright raunchy whisperings but the sun was due any time now and there was still scheming to do.

"We leave as soon as the sun comes up," Eric said, and rattled off the details of the morning in his business voice. I had misgivings. Plenty. As far as I could tell, her powerful, ancient entity side didn't factor into Emma's choices so much as her young, human woman side did.

But the sun didn't leave me with time to raise complaints. The glass of the windows was too dark to see sunrise but I could measure the amount of light in the world by weight of Eric's eyelids. This was only the second time I'd been with him as he was falling asleep. And just like it had the first time I'd met Jack Walker, the situation (Eric all unconscious) had me feeling oddly protective.

I stroked the ridges and planes of his broad back, reveling, as always, in the feel of cool skin over muscle and bone. I wondered what my skin felt like to him. Did my hand leave slow burning streaks of living heat? Could he sense the little jolts of electricity that directed the cells of my body?

I wanted to keep him for a few minutes. To watch over him maybe, for just a few seconds as he fell asleep. But now wasn't the time for contemplating his profile or inspecting his still form.

It was go time.

Eric shook himself and stood up all at once (I guess that was the tearing off a Band-Aid approach to fighting sunrise). He pulled on jeans and a t-shirt without bothering with anything underneath. Then, with the help of a little hovering, he folded himself neatly into the travel coffin. He turned a broad grin in my direction and pulled the lid closed with a click. The whole thing felt strangely like hide-and-seek.

My first task (after dressing in inconspicuous business-casual) was to collect Bill and to get both vampires down to the dungeons. When I asked Eric how, exactly, I was supposed to accomplish that he'd said, "I have every confidence in your ability to think of something, lover."

"Gee, thanks," I replied. "We couldn't have skipped just _one orgasm_ to make time for planning?"

Eric weighed me with a very skeptical look and found my argument wanting.

"Yeah, I guess not," I answered for myself.

Retrieving Bill's travel coffin from my former room and getting it into the elevator was no big deal but the trouble would start when I had two coffins to maneuver and limited arms and elevator space to work with. Taking them one at a time would waste precious minutes (Bill hadn't exactly left a huge cushion of time between sunrise and take off) and force me to leave each of the coffins unattended for a while. That idea made me kind of nervous. There are reasons vamps jealously guard their sleeping locations. During daylight, they are particularly stakeable and flammable.

I was standing in the hallway just outside my room contemplating the coffins and my options when my problems were solved in the form a really dreadful looking Simon.

"Simon!" I said, taking in the almost purple bags under his eyes and the pallor of his face. "What happened?"

The redhead who'd once been my jovial tour guide shook his head with weary disbelief. "The Sisters took him," he croaked from a dehydrated throat. "They have my brother."

The short details of his brother's capture by the violent Vegas gangs uncurled in a jumble of thoughts. But there was something else there too. "I remember some things. From the dungeons." Simon said uncertainly. "You're trying to stop them. I want to help."

I nodded but couldn't meet his eyes. I guess we were trying to stop the whole seizing of vamps for leeching thing. Indirectly. It wasn't exactly priority one. "I need to get the vampires down to Jack. We need to leave this morning."

Simon joined me in looking at the travel coffins. "We won't be able to get these down to the dungeons without help," he said. "Mr. Madden is not going to be pleased that you've made your own travel arrangements. I want to help … for Peter. But I can't involve anyone else. You understand?"

"Yeah," I said. I didn't want any humans getting hurt because of me either.

"What if we bring Mr. Walker up? Will that work?"

"Sure."

Ten minutes later, we had both coffins wheeled into an unoccupied ballroom. "Stay here with the vampires and I'll retrieve Mr. Madden's guest," Simon said.

I looked at the coffins uncertainly. I didn't like the idea of leaving someone else to guard my vampires. Especially someone who, for most intents and purposes, was still Victor's goon. (Well, maybe 'goon' isn't the right word for Simon. Lapdog?) Plus, it wasn't as if he and Jack got along like old drinking buddies or as if Jack was bound to be cooperative. "Maybe I should go."

"Sookie, I know the access codes, I have the key to the restraints, and, if Mr. Walker is not compliant, it will be easier to me to deal with the resulting dead weight." Simon had a point. I remembered the codes but I didn't have a key to the cuffs and vampire blood or no, it'd be a struggle for me move Jack if he Walked out on me.

It was while I was waiting for Simon to bring the Walker up from the dungeons that I thought about the bracelets and how they might just work.

I hadn't forgotten what a wreck Jack had been in the dungeons but it was still kind of a shock to see the badly abused body that leaned heavily on Simon in order to make it into the ballroom. Simon had brought one of Sanguine's plush terry robes with him to cover the more obvious wounds that decorated Jack's back but the man still walked with heavy steps and his cheeks looked hollow and his eyes sunken in proper light. "Jack ..." I said, rushing forward to help Simon get the Walker to the nearest chair.

"He can't go anywhere like this," I said with equal parts horror and dismay. The fact that he'd draw all kind of unwanted attention notwithstanding, the journey might very well kill him. I thought about the burns on his back and wondered how much it would take to put him in to shock. I'd seen so little of him in this vulnerable human form that I hadn't thought about how we'd deal with all the damage to his body.

"Well he better be going somewhere," Jack said rather weakly. "Because he just dragged himself all the way up those godforsaken stairs."

Prospects didn't improve when I peeled back the fabric of the robe as gently as possible to get a look at his back. The sight turned my stomach. His back was all pus and blood sticking to the terry cloth.

"Colorful, isn't it?" Jack quipped a little deliriously, and then turned to Simon. "The accommodations here are terrible. Tell your boss he owes me a new bed and medicine that grows new skin. He owes me about three feet of new skin."

Simon and I ignored him, both of us trying the figure out what to do next.

_Medicine that grows skin_, I thought ruefully. "Jack," I said, pretty sure I was about to break a whole bunch of supernatural as well as relationship taboos. "What happens if you have vampire blood?"


	30. Chapter 30

**Disclaimer: **See part 1, also very tiny tribute in here to the late and great Nan Dibble. A whole slew of points to anyone who picks up on it and no meaning at all lost if you don't.

**Note: **Here we are 30 chapter and nearly 100k words later. Who knew this would end up a novel? Last chapter, if you remember, was not quite linear. This chapter picks up where that left off, therefore it is still the morning before the Southwest flight. Thanks to nyc for her mad beta skillz.

**More important note:** We're going to leave off here for a while. Due to the plot intricacies, I've decided it's better if I complete the story before posting any more updates. Therefore, after this chapter expect a break of a month or two. When updates come again, I plan to post the chapters every few days (like I was at the beginning of things) until we reach the end. So this is my official last apology for slow updates. See you on the other side.

**Chapter 30**

"Jack, what happens if you have vampire blood?"

"The world ends."

Simon and I, both forgetting to breathe, stared at the Walker for a full minute before realizing he was kidding. Or something. I crossed my arms and gave him my best glower (which is a darn good glower, if I do say so myself). "Not. Funny."

His smirk begged to differ.

"Really Jack … you're more human than human. You'll heal like anyone else would." Maybe I was trying to convince myself a little. His joke had left me a little uneasy. The Walker had wreaked some pretty serious havoc with his own blood in the past, so I figured 'uneasy' was a reasonable way to feel. "And Eric's blood is strong. It works fast."

Jack's smirk turned into a level stare. I didn't have to read his mind to know he didn't plan on cooperating.

"Is it that you don't want vampire blood or that you don't want Eric's blood?" I asked, pretty sure I could guess the answer.

"There are two vampires here," Simon pointed out quietly when Jack didn't respond.

"Bill was poisoned with silver recently," I explained. "I don't think it'd be a good idea for him to lose blood." Plus, while I was as sure as my name is Sookie Stackhouse that Eric would be beyond angry (probably more like furiousfuckingmad) at me for doling his blood out without permission, I'd feel even more wrong about taking it from Bill. We were busting Jack out, against his will, to save Eric from trial. So if someone was going to give blood (against his will), it should be Eric. It was just logical.

"Jack...."

The Walker smiled nastily and broke his silence. "Come near me with that vampire's blood and I will Walk out on you faster than Bill Compton did."

He was just trying to get my back up, but it wasn't going to work, even if my eyebrows had promptly gone skyward in surprise at the sudden rancor. If he Walked now, we'd be able to get the blood into him whether he wanted it or not. I thought about forcing Jack to drink from Eric for all of two seconds. _When, exactly, did you become Andre? _The little voice was even nastier than Jack's, since it was mine.

"Jack," I said in as reasonable a tone as I could muster. "You're hurt. Really, really hurt. Anyone hurt like that … anyone else would take the blood."

"Well it's too bad for me that I'm not anyone else." He matched my reasonable tone. "Just me." He shifted in his chair, taking as much weight as possible off the burnt portions of his body. "I don't need to get any prettier and I'm not about to jump at the chance to swallow down vampire GPS."

That, the fact that Eric's blood would act like a homing beacon, had been the angle that Simon had been trying to think his way around for the past few minutes. _Guy like him doesn't want to make himself easier to find_, Simon reasoned. _Going in and out the way he does. Body's the vulnerable part._

I had a feeling there was more to it than that. "Is it vampire blood you don't want?" I asked again. "Or Eric's blood?"

"Are you suggesting that I turn Eric human and then drink his blood?" Jack, a perfect portrait of shock and horror, asked. "Because that seems like a strange and disgusting idea. Even from you."

If Eric needed to breathe, he'd have gone blue in the face with all the times he'd warned me about the Walker, so I was on my toes. I knew that he was trying to manipulate me even when he was joking. Like now. He'd been in my memories. He'd seen the situations I'd gotten myself into, the stupid things I'd done that usually ended in me getting beaten up, or staked, or shot. But he'd also seen me make it out of each situation alive.

"Jack, you're really old, right?" I asked rhetorically, since it was a well established fact. "And being … what you are … you've died a bunch of times? Well I might be younger than your newest pair of underwear, but I haven't died _yet, _so it's my strange and disgusting ideas we're going to go with, got it?"

It was Jack's turn to look surprised. Eyes wide, he smiled and laughed. For the first time that day, there might have been actual humor in it. "Fine," he said, just like that. "But you don't actually want me to drink his blood when he's human, right? Because that really is disgusting."

I rolled my eyes but found myself smiling at him anyway. I couldn't hear anything but the barest impressions of his thoughts, but I got the feeling that he'd always meant to agree, just like he'd walked up the stairs with Simon without a fight. What it all meant was this: part of him probably wanted to go along with us, to help end all the bloodshed, to finally meet his sister, and the other part probably wanted to keep running. I wasn't really arguing with him, I was helping him mediate his argument with himself.

Hands on his knees like he was trying to convince himself to stand up, the Walker stared at Eric's coffin.

"Simon, could you ...." I glanced at the door and with the intuition of a man in the high end hospitality industry (which is nearly as good as telepathy), Simon quickly exited the ballroom.

"It's Eric's blood," I guessed, though I'd known all along. "You're afraid."

Jack pushed himself to his feet and I thought it wasn't just the pain-filled way he walked that made him look suddenly old. He ran his fingers along the seam of the coffin, finding the catch and opening the lid so Eric was revealed. My vampire wasn't stretched out in Crusader's pose like he'd been laid out for a funeral but turned on his side, one arm curled under his head like he'd just happened to fall asleep inside a coffin.

My protective instincts rose up and I took an involuntary step forward. But then something held me in check. Seeing the Walker looking down at the vampire, I knew Jack had a claim here too and it was different than mine, separate, older. _He is one of mine_, Jack had told me once while we stood side-by-side and looked at Eric's soul.

"He was so powerful and beautiful. Samael," Jack said, fingertips resting delicately on the lip on the coffin. His eyes shone, bright and wet. "He was all will. Unbreakable, unrelenting."

"That sounds familiar," I heard myself say. I was surprised to find that my lips and vocal cords were working. The rest of my muscles seemed to have frozen. We didn't have time for this but it was time anyway.

Jack nodded after a while. Slowly and deeply. Like it wasn't me he was agreeing with but someone very far away. "He could do anything, with just a word, anything at all. Except be what he was not." Jack frowned a little and cocked his head to one side. "I didn't understand it, _we_ didn't understand it at the time. We thought it was a test. We spent a long time, _lifetimes_, wondering if we'd passed. But I think it might have been about him all along. Change. It was the one thing he couldn't do and the thing we do constantly.

"We thought he was our enemy. Death. Evil. And maybe he was … but we couldn't understand him any better than he could understand us." Jack turned from Eric slowly, like he was forcing himself to remember that I was there. "He asked us to change him, to make him like us, and we didn't understand that either."

"He was an angel," I said, trying to catch up. "And you made him human so he could understand humans, understand change." _A fallen angel. Kind of an important adjective there._

Jack shook his head. "Maybe that's what he wanted but we didn't understand. We just knew that if there was something out there … if there was really something that made us, made everything, he was at odds with it and we shouldn't be dealing with him. But, sometimes when you are very young, you cross lines just to see if you can, just to see if someone's watching."

I nodded. He probably thought I couldn't understand. Like he said, it was all so big. But I'd fallen in love with a vampire, with death, maybe with the Devil himself. I had some idea what it meant to realize you only ever crossed your own lines, and that the truly scary thing was that, on the other side, you were responsible for figuring out what was right or wrong. "What happened?"

"We did it, like he wanted. It was a long time ago, back near the beginning of things. We exchanged blood with him, both of us. It was the old magic, human magic. Blood and spit and tears and sex. All of it. We got him close enough to make him like us. To make it permanent. But he was so powerful," Jack said, eyes wide like he still couldn't take it all in. "He was so powerful and things don't just disappear."

The Walker was quiet a while, and, even through the onslaught of information, I felt the press of time. I thought about touching his skin, trying to learn what he needed to tell me directly from his mind. But his wide eyes stopped me. Whatever he was remembering … I had the feeling that trying to get it direct from his mind would be like trying to drink from a fire hose.

"As he was, Samael was outside time. He had to come into it. Maybe he picked that time and those people because they were like him. Dangerous. Violent. Willful. All we knew was, he was gone. And then it began to happen. There was new power in our children. They started to be born more than human: fairies, shifters, witches, vampires. There was suddenly more magic in the world, building every year. Near us, the magic would collapse, our children would become human just as he had. There was always trouble for us then, angry beings that were afraid of being made less than they had been.

"We lived and died as so many people, always finding him in our memories, always wondering what became of him. And then the magic reached its height, a thousand years ago. It was too strong in the world. Wars broke out ... we'd finally come to the point when he'd been born, when he'd entered time. We understood. All that power that had been his, that had made suns, it could never fit inside a single human life so it flowed out of him, forward and backward through time. It had gone through us to our children since we had taken it from him. And there he was, just another man. We thought he'd live and love and fight and die like any other man and it would be over. He'd learn what he'd wanted to learn and become himself again, take his power back. Make us safe."

"But he was turned," I said. "By the Roman legionnaire." We were talking about Eric now. At least I hoped we were. If not, I was lost.

"Yes," Jack said and picked up one of Eric's hands. "The angel who wanted to try being a man ended up a vampire."

"Ironic," I said, because what else do you say to that?

"Maybe not," Jack said and looked at me strangely. "Maybe it was just inevitable. Vampires don't really change either."

I turned away under the weight of the look, not sure what he wanted from me. "So, what? Does Eric know? Is he just waiting around until he catches a stray beam of sunlight and gets to go back to being all fallen angel and omnipotent?"

Jack actually snorted. "Does Eric Northman strike you as someone waiting around to die?"

"No," I replied. "Pretty much the opposite."

"You saw his soul," Jack said. "It's … impressive."

"Too much to take in," I said.

"Mhm," Jack nodded. "It's all there, I think, in the soul. But he became human. Just like the rest of you. This is the one life he knows. The other ...."

"It would be too much to take in," I said.

"It would swallow him up," Jack agreed. "He wouldn't be Eric anymore."

I didn't like the sound of that at all. But it did sound familiar. "That's what you're worried about with Emma," I remembered. "You're worried that if she gets too close to you she'll get lost in, what, being the Density?"

"Yeah," Jack said with as much uncertainty as I'd ever seen him express. "We're alike that way, us and Eric. Human and more than human. I guess I don't have to tell you that in a situation like that, the human usually loses."

He didn't have to tell me. I'd been in the hospital enough times now to be an authority on the subject. I figured it was about time to cut to the chase. "What's the worst that could happen here?"

"I don't know."

_Fantastic._ "Take a guess."

"Worst? For you? Well, I guess we could get to Emma in Shreveport and she could lose it completely and go super nova to black hole on us, change every supe for miles around. The people closest to her … even the humans could get pulled in some." He shrugged. "Or maybe I hear her out, why she's doing all this, and I change sides. Then it's both of us and some super-humans against the vampires. You already know how well that went for the vampires last time."

Okay, so he definitely wasn't one to sugarcoat. "Didn't work out so well for you either," I reminded him. "You killed your sister. Still haven't forgiven yourself for it."

"Don't worry, Sookie Stackhouse," he said, grinning like he hadn't just glibly described what would be a very, very ugly war. "That's the worst thing I can think of happening for you. But, rest assured, I'm on your side."

"Why? Residual guilt?"

Jack turned Eric's hand over, examining the wrist. "If there's another war, Eric might die. As of now, he's a being who's been stuck an extra thousand years in a borrowed form and still hasn't learned what he set out to learn. If he dies now, it was all a waste. All that power that forced human history to change shape, all the times my sister and I died, all wasted. He'd go back to what he was and never be able to understand us, never be able to love us. He'd just be Death. Your fallen angel. Your devil."

I did two things without meaning to: I shuddered and I moved to stand next to Jack. I looked down at Eric, dead to the world. Beautiful and powerful, yes, but …. "That's not him," I said to myself or to Jack, I wasn't sure. "He's _Eric_. He's, well, not good _exactly_ but … he loves me."

"Which is why I'd rather him not die yet," Jack said, seemingly unconcerned that I was maybe crying. A little. "He's changing, Sookie. He's a vampire. He shouldn't do that, but he is. Because of you, I think. If he learns change, if he learns to really love just one of us .... Maybe when he is Samael once again ...."

"It'll be better," I finished and Jack nodded.

I promptly sat on the floor.

Jack dropped beside me in a crouch, wincing. "Sookie?" He asked in a hushed voice, looking around wildly. "What are we doing?"

"I'm being overwhelmed. What are _you_ doing?"

"You dropped like rock," he said, as if I hadn't noticed. "I assumed we were being shot at or something." That was alright, as far as I was concerned. Only one of us was allowed to be overwhelmed and I'd already cornered the market.

"Are you shot at often?" I asked, brain on a rather sarcastic autopilot as I tried to process all I'd just learned.

"More than the average person I'd say," Jack said conversationally.

"Me too," I agreed.

Jack winced some and his breathing sped up.

"Now what are you doing?" I asked, concerned.

"Bleeding, most likely," he replied, standing up slowly. "Let's get this over with."

"Alright," I stood up shakily. Given the choice, I might have stayed parked on that floor for a few hours. Or maybe days. Or maybe just the rest of my natural life.

"You okay?" Jack seemed to expect a 'yes.'

"Jack, you pretty much just told me that I'm supposed to be responsible for reforming Satan. That's kind of a tall order." I wasn't even exaggerating. That really was what he'd told me, indirectly at least.

"If it makes you feel any better, I could be wrong."

The whole business of healing Jack and making the vamps daylight safe was kind of harrowing. For one thing, I had a really unexpected and embarrassingly intense attack of jealousy when Jack bit Eric's wrist. I'd been the only human to have Eric's blood in the last hundred years or so. Until now.

Vamp blood isn't inherently pleasant. At least, not in my experience. But it's not especially foul either. So the circumstances play into the experience a lot. A lovers' blood exchange is pretty thrilling—caring and violence and surrender and control all wrapped up in one.

Healing's a different kind of rush. You can feel the blood working in you, filling in the torn, damaged parts. There's a warmth to it, a sense of well-being. Like being held. You feel … precious.

Once he'd decided to go along with it, Jack wasn't squeamish about drinking from Eric. He bit right in to a a thick wrist and drank loudly but neatly. A few mouthfuls in, Jack's body must have realized that it was getting the healing it so badly needed because his eyes went kind of soft and unfocussed. When he pulled away, the Walker was definitely a little blissed out.

Yeah, part of me was really not okay with that. Especially considering whatever weird, kinky magic stuff he'd gotten up too with Samael that had resulted in permanent human-ification.

I felt little better when I could see the wounds on his skin knitting together. At least it had worked.

Then, finally seeming to get that time was of the essence, Jack started in on the vampires. Eric, he said, was simple since Emma had changed him already and now Jack had had his blood. The Walker just stuck a finger in Eric's mouth and gave him a good, hard shake.

Eric's eyes fluttered. "Hey. It's go time," Jack said.

Eric sniffed the air once and then he was sitting up, shaking his head and breathing. I felt a rush that was almost as warm as the bond. He was alive again, for a little while. And he was mine.

Sitting as he was in a coffin that rested across some chairs, Eric and I were pretty much eye-to-eye. It was the easiest thing in the world for me to lean over and kiss him. I made it a long, slow one, reveling in the temporary warmth of his mouth.

_I__ love you_, he thought in that very deliberate way that he had to think so that I could hear.

I felt strangely grateful. I hadn't realized just how much I needed to hear it again. So I said it back. Out loud. Since that was the only way Eric could hear it even if my whole mind was shouting reciprocation.

Our little bout of PDA didn't even seem to register with Jack who was busy contemplating Bill.

Bill turned out to be slightly trickier. "He's never been changed before," Jack said, frowning down at Bill who was still and dead in his coffin. "It won't stick as easily."

When he'd first woken, Eric had regarded Jack warily but now they exchanged a look. Jack nodded.

Both men (since that's what they were at the moment) shook Bill who was much harder to wake than Eric. When Bill's eyelids finally stirred, Jack sung, "Good morning!" Then he grabbed Bill by the ears and planted a big kiss right on the dazed vampire's mouth, holding him there until Bill started sputtering and struggling for breath.

I wish I could say I didn't laugh.

While Eric coached Bill through the intricacies of breathing, I called Simon in, and he helped the healing Jack change into clothes that didn't look as if they'd spent a few months in a dungeon.

Realizing that Eric, human as he was, probably didn't know he'd donated blood to the Walker, I decided to man up (woman up?) and tell him before he found out on his own. The fact that I felt pretty wretched about it didn't seem to signify.

Now, a few hours later, as he stared out the window of an airplane bound for Louisiana, out at a sunlit sky, it was pretty clear that Eric was still pissed. Not quite furiousfuckingmad like he'd been at the hotel, during check-in, and while waiting at the gate. But definitely pissed.

And I hadn't even told he him was Satan yet.

_End part the first._


End file.
